Tony Voters Embraced It. Britain’s Prime Minister Criticizes It. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris Unpacks Polarizing Reaction To His ‘Slave Play’ In New HBO Documentary

EXCLUSIVE: When Jeremy O. Harris moved Slave Play to Broadway in 2019, it created a sensation on a level rarely seen in the theater world.

“Brash, smart and gleefully confrontational, this is the kind of show that starts arguments,” Time Out wrote in its critique, noting that the show had become a “succès de scandale” from the moment it initially premiered Off Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop. Deadline’s Greg Evans, in his review of the Broadway iteration, wrote, “This isn’t a ‘slave play’ – a play about slaves, a noun – but a tale that uses, to its own provocative ends, ‘slave play’ as a sexual term, a verb, that for all we know actually lives in the real unreal world of Internet fetishism.”

Harris – said to be the youngest Black male playwright to stage a Broadway production – is about to make his documentary directorial debut with Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play, described as a self-portrait of the artist as he workshopped Slave Play with actors from New York’s William Esper Studio. The film premieres on HBO on Thursday, June 20 and will stream on Max; we have your first look at the documentary in the trailer above.

Harris confronts head-on “the debate surrounding the play… reflecting both on its success, including 12 Tony Award nominations, and the outrage it provoked,” notes a release. “Probing the incendiary nature of the text, Harris and his actors search for the truth within each of the eight roles that play on and subvert racial stereotypes and power inequalities within interracial couples. Intercutting the rehearsal sessions with clips from the live stage performances, Harris reveals the polarizing impacts of the play with laughter and applause from some audiences and anger, discomfort, and derision from others. Challenging our own history and modern paradigms, Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play invites us to live in uncomfortable spaces and reimagine the possibilities of theater itself.”

Part of the controversy that arose from the Broadway production of Slave Play was Harris’s decision to reserve two performances of the show largely for Black-identifying audiences, an idea dubbed Black Out. Per Harris, at the first sold out Black Out night at Broadway’s John Golden Theatre, 800 of the 804 seats were occupied by Black patrons. According to BlackOutNite.com, a Black Out “is the purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-Black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, athletic, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze.”

The London production of Slave Play is set to open at the Noel Coward Theatre on June 29, with Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones) joining the cast. Harris once again plans to set aside two nights for Black Out performances, a move that drew criticism from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Through a spokesman, the PM said, “Restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.” (It is important to note that Harris says while Black Out performances are specifically marketed to Black audiences, no one is turned away; the concept is to welcome Black people to the arena of what Harris refers to as literary theatre, which both in London and New York typically attracts an overwhelmingly white clientele).

HBO Documentary Films presents Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play, directed by Jeremy O. Harris; produced by Chris Moukarbel and Natalia Leigh-Brown; edited by Peter Ohs and Teki Cruickshank; composer, Isabella Summers; cinematographer, Matt Klammer; sound design & mix by Jeremy Grody; co-producer, Jamie McBriety. For HBO, executive producers are Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Tina Nguyen.

In the trailer, members of the cast watch a video of a heated argument that broke out over the play in what appears to be a theater lobby. Watch it above.