Audience Member Disrupts Production of PASSAGE with Racist Remark

According to Philly.com, an audience member interrupted a performance of the play Passage at the Wilma Theater in Center City Thursday night. Jaylene Clark Owens, an actress in the production, was performing a scene that included a white actor (Ross Beschler) and Filipino actor (Justin Jain), when a man interrupted loudly, referencing Forrest Gump in a racially-charged comment.

The situation prompted a viral Facebook post from Owens, which details what happened.

"I had just said a line of the play in which I used the words 'their' and 'they,' " Owens wrote in the post. A man in the first row, "a big white male, somewhere in his 30s-40s with big muscles," raised his hand and said loudly, "'Who is they? I don't know who they are.'"

Clark continues the post with, "He then says something along the lines of 'I don't mean to interrupt your Black Panther party, and I'm not Forrest Gump," which Owens learned is a reference to a scene in the film Forrest Gump.

The man's loud outbursts continued until the house manager asked him to leave, to which he responded "Now I've been kicked out. Well I'm not leaving." He was told he was not allowed to return after intermission and he left the theatre on his own accord.

Blanka Zizka, cofounder of the Wilma and director of Passage said that the man was part of a 60-student group from Drexel University who attended the play together. She said he was an Iraq veteran who recently had brain surgery.

"I've never had an experience anything like this in the theater," said Owens. "Nothing where I felt literally as if I were in danger. People have gotten vocal, but nothing where I felt scared, or where someone interrupted the show."

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