The London theater has decided to implement racial segregation for two upcoming shows, restricting ticket sales based on the audience members’ skin color. The event organizers proudly stated that the “all-black identifying audience” will be able to enjoy the play without the presence of the white gaze.
According to the playwright, the division based on race is essential as black individuals allegedly feel uneasy around white individuals in a theater environment. Despite the announcement, the decision has sparked a significant backlash.
“In other circles, it would be illegal and racial discrimination,” a senior Conservative Party Member of Parliament reportedly told the Daily Mail.
“I don’t understand why this isn’t.”
The playwright, Jeremy O. Harris, who is known for his progressive views, expressed his enthusiasm in an interview with BBC Sounds about the decision to exclusively offer ticket sales to individuals who self-identify as black. As per the report, individuals who identify as white will not be able to purchase tickets for the shows scheduled on July 17 and September 17.
“[I]t is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say ‘you’re invited. Specifically you,’” Harris said.
There is no evidence suggesting that the audience members will receive an “invitation” to the shows. Instead, they would be required to purchase tickets through the regular process. This occurrence is not unprecedented. Harris initiated the “BLACK OUT” initiative subsequent to his work on “Slave Play.”
The “BLACK OUT” initiative “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.”
“A concept birthed by Slave Play playwright Jeremy O. Harris, the inaugural BLACK OUT night took place on September 18, 2019.
“For the first time in history, all 804 seats of Broadway’s Golden Theatre were occupied by black-identifying audience members in communion, celebration, and recognition of Broadway’s rich, diverse, and fraught history of black work.”
“One of the things we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there and in most places in the West, poor people and black people have been told that they do not belong inside the theater,” Harris claimed.
The London show features Kit Harington, renowned for his portrayal of Jon Snow in the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” The playwright, who claims to have grown up in a “working-class environment,” asserts that racial segregation is a crucial measure to undertake.
“There are a litany of places in our country that are generally only inhabited by white people, and nobody is questioning that, and nobody is saying that by inviting black audiences here you are uninvited,” Harris said. “The idea of a Black Out night is to say this is a night that we are specifically inviting black people to fill up the space, to feel safe with a lot of other black people in a place where they often do not feel safe.”
