It stunned audiences with a sold-out run at New York Theatre Workshop. Now, Slave Play is coming to Broadway. Written by Jeremy O. Harris, "one of the most promising playwrights of his generation" (Vogue), this "dazzling mix of satire and psychodrama" (The New York Times) is directed by two-time NAACP and OBIE Award winner Robert O'Hara.
The Old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation - in the breeze, in the cotton fields... and in the crack of the whip. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems. Slave Play rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality in 21st-century America.
Because Slave Play-sharply and smartly directed by Robert O'Hara-is a show that needs to be processed. Admittedly, that is a terribly clinical way to put it. 'Can you stop saying processing?' yells one character, Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan). 'We aren't computers. My emotions aren't materials.' But fair warning: As the program note by poet-novelist Morgan Parker begins, 'This might hurt.'
It's a shocker alright, and provocatively compelling, many would say. And while I'm happy to see new works by young playwrights challenge the status quo, especially when performed so brilliantly as 'Slave Play' is...this one is dramatically quite a mess. Provocative? Yes. An intriguing premise? Yes. Important theatre? No, at least not yet.
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