Theater's Black-Only Performances to Avoid 'White Gaze' Spark Fury

[MAIN IMAGE] Kit Harington at the premiere of “Extrapolations” on March 14, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. [INSET IMAGE] Jeremy O. Harris at the Bottega Veneta fashion show during Milan Fashion Week on February 24, 2024 in Italy. Harington is starring in Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ on the West End.

Some people who have just learned about the concept of a theater “Black Out” are mad about it.

The Jeremy O. Harris-penned Slave Play is heading to London’s West End after an award-winning run on Broadway. Black Out” nights encourage white people not to attend certain nights of the show reserved for an all-Black identifying audience.

The concept of a “Black Out” is to allow Black people to feel comfortable watching a performance in a theater where everybody else in the audience looks like them.

Harris came up with the concept when Slave Play premiered in 2019 and now some people in England are learning about it as the show prepares for a run on the other side of the Atlantic. He confirmed the concept will be applied in the West End during an interview with BBC radio.

Starring Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington, Slave Play will be directed by Robert O’Hara, who also helmed it on Broadway and will play at the Noël Coward Theater from June 29. Two of the its 91-show run will be reserved for “Black Out” nights.

The Tony nominated, three-act play tells the story of three interracial couples who undergo “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy” to be able to reignite attraction to their white partners.

Other U.K. theater shows have adopted the “Black Out” practice including Tambo & Bones at London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East in 2023.

Its director, Matthew Xia, explained such performances in a statement at the time as the “purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-Black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, and cultural spaces—free from the white gaze.”

Despite the reasonings, there were some people are unhappy about the concept and took to X, formerly Twitter to share their gripes.

“No whites allowed at this theatre on certain days to protect black people from the “white gaze.” How is this legal?” wrote the ‘Libs of TikTok’ account.

Another person replied: “How could we possibly have gotten to this point?”

And a third wrote: “What are our eyes made of lasers or something? 😂”

Newsweek contacted representatives of the theater, Harris, O’Hara and Xia for comment.

Theater director, Nadia Fall, explained why “Black Outs” are vital.

“The Black Out performance is part of addressing that imbalance, offering a night to centre and celebrate the Black experience,” Fall wrote in The Guardian.

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