Slave Play – Broadway: An Opinion

So I experienced Slave Play at the John Golden Theatre yesterday, and I’m still processing. But given that it took me forever to process Fairview, I have decided to just get my thoughts out there and not add to my “to blog” backlog.

Where to start? Basics! Slave Play, which opened on Broadway in September describes itself as an “an antebellum fever-dream as three interracial couples converge to rip open history at the intersection of race, love, sex, and sexuality in 21st-century America”. It has received mixed reviews.

The New York Times called it “one of the best and most provocative new works to show up on Broadway in years”. It triggered a Change.org petition to shut down the play describing it as “one of the most disrespectful displays of anti-Black sentiment disguised as art”. So far the petition has over 6000 signatures. Then earlier this month during a Q&A session following a performance, a white woman, nicknamed “Talkback Tammy” by the internet freaked out and raged against Jeremy O. Harris, the Black, gay playwright, speaking out of turn and in short accusing him of being racist towards white people.

Wow!

Slave Play was thus on my radar as a “do I want to see this? – perhaps not”. But when I announced to a friend that I was day-tripping to New York City from Washington D.C. for hot chocolate, she suggested we attend a performance, and since the show ends its Broadway debut next month I happily agreed. She, however, bought the tickets which meant I did not catch the disclaimer on the play’s webpage that the intended audience is 17+, i.e. mature, due to nudity, sexual content, simulated sexual violence and racially violent language.

And that my friends is how my end-of-year hot chocolate pampering treat ended up with me feeling emotionally violated. In the first half of the show, I probably asked my friend and no one in particular a million times “What am I watching?!” “What on earth am I watching?!” “What?!” “What is happening?!” I understood then why there was no intermission. I’m not sure I would have returned.

The theatre was dimly lit during the performance so much brighter than you would expect. In addition, the stage consisted of large mirrors that reflected back on us the audience. I suppose this is so that the experience is as immersive as possible. I looked at the expressions of those around me. I looked to see if anyone got up to leave. I listened for where we collectively chuckled and for where we fell in awkward silence. The tight cramped seats of the theatre added to the uncomfortableness. No, I was not watching a show on Broadway. I was experiencing it. And in part two I would process it along with the performers.

I guess that’s all I’m going to say without giving away details.

I did find bits of myself in each of the black characters. When Philip argued that he was neither Black nor White but that he was seen and treated as just ” a Philip”, I wondered how many people see and treat me as just a KChie rather than as a dark-skinned black woman. And then I wondered if I suppress KChie in my interracial romantic relationships and in spaces where I am a token minority so as not to make it obvious that yes, my race actually does impact everything that happens to me. But in trying to figure out in what scenario I am at my most authentic self though I realised that nationality blurs sense of self, perhaps more so than my race and I stopped. I didn’t have the energy. Too complicated.

24 hours later I’m still processing Slave Play but one thing is very clear. I’m upset with and offended by the Kaneisha character. I feel that she as the black woman is most brutalised and most demeaned. I Feel myself creating distance between myself and this denigration of the character that most looks like me. As soon as she started twerking to Rihanna’s “Work” in the play’s opening, I was horrified. While I identified with her self-consciousness, I could not identify with her desire to have her white husband, Jim, see the ancestors inside her and call her a “nasty negress” in their slave and overseer role play. Nope! Never!

I understood that Kaneisha in marrying a non-American white man who refuses to acknowledge that part of her, her Blackness, calling her his “queen” had thought initially she was in a safe space only to realise years later that he with his neutrality, his white privilege, was part of the problem. But was that his problem or hers?

Sitting there, it made me think of my own romantic relationships with white European men. I wondered how I would feel watching the play with each of them. Which of them would agree to watch it with me in the first place? What sort of conversation would ensue between the two of us afterwards? I wondered how many black people in interracial relationships would walk out of this play questioning their relationships. Heavy.

I watched Slave Play with the usual Broadway demographic. Well to do, presumably over-educated, predominantly white, old people (where old is over 40). However, I was too busy processing my own thoughts to worry about what my white neighbour was feeling. In other words, I did not feel singled out by my black femininity. But had I attended with a white man, romantic partner or otherwise, I imagine I would have had reasons to squirm in my seat, to avert eyes, to attempt to disappear.

Which brings me back to Talkback Tammy. Her outburst and the analysis of her outburst reminds me of my experience at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which I visited a week after it opened in September 2016. I had become aware of this phenomenon of white people, specifically white women, centering themselves in situations that have nothing to do with them and the resultant resentment of Black people.

It really is incredulous that in a play that highlights how the black person in each couple doesn’t feel heard or valued by his or her partner that it is possible for Talkback Tammy, and others like her, to not only completely miss the point, but also to demonstrate a real-life version of what it is the play is satirizing, making the entire performance about her. Her oblivion did not even end there. Reportedly she returned the following day asking to speak to the general manager. Sigh! You can bring a horse to the water but you can’t force it to drink.

On another note though, I’m still sitting here wondering why the couples weren’t more outraged to learn they were part of a research project rather than receiving a proven therapeutic intervention. Ah well! In the end, I’m okay with having endured this confrontational experience but I can’t say that I like Slave Play. Yet, I would be open to experiencing it again. I know! To be able to process it further, unpack it some more, you know, without the shock of not knowing what is happening. I would have benefited from a good, honest, rational, conversation afterwards which of course my friend and I attempted to do but over a couple cocktails. Slave Play is going to dwell with me for weeks for sure. As controversial as it is, as uncomfortable as its truths are, I do think that it is an experience worthy of Broadway that all must participate in. How else are we to grow?