At ‘Slave Play’ in London, a ‘Black Out’ Night Emerges From Controversy

Elaine Grant was pleased with the scene unfolding outside the Noël Coward Theater in London on Wednesday night.

Unlike most nights at the theater in the West End, there was a sea of majority Black faces laughing and jovially chatting in a line that snaked around the block before a performance of Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play.”

Grant, who works in the arts, had organized a group of more than 100 people, mostly Black women, to see the show. “A lot of the people that I work with don’t necessarily go to the theater a lot,” she said, and so it was important for them to be in a space where they could feel safe experiencing a range of emotion.

This was a “Black Out” performance, an idea Harris first announced for his play’s Broadway 2019 run, in which he invites Black audience members to attend a specific performance, to experience and discuss art away from the white gaze. Joaquina Kalukango, an actress in the show’s New York run, told the Times in 2020 that she felt on those nights that she was performing to an audience “that fully understood the story and understood where these characters were coming from.”

In London, the mood on the theater steps was upbeat and there seemed little concern that when this “Slave Play” transfer — including two Black Out performances — was announced in February, it drew the wrath of some British commentators, and got caught up in ongoing debates over race in British cultural institutions. Even the office of the prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, chimed in, saying, “restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.”

Harris responded to the widespread criticism on social media, addressing what he called a “moral panic” among parts of the British public.