The Noël Coward theater, the jewel of the West End, a district of London’s major stages, is preparing to accept on certain evenings only spectators who are black or “identify as black”. This will be the case on July 17 and September 17 for the controversial piece Slave Play by African-American author Jeremy O. Harris. The story of three mixed couples whose black wife or husband no longer feels sexual desire for their white partner. The producers of the play explain that these evenings, called “Black Out”, “are the purposeful creation of an environment in which Black and self-identified spectators can experience and discuss an event away from the gaze of White people.” If it is successful, the producers promise other dates.
These segregative evenings, which emerged in New York in 2019 on the occasion of the American creation of Slave Play, are not new across the Channel. Prestigious public theaters such as the Lyric Hammersmith, the Theater Royal Stratford East and the Almeida Theater have already organized them, featuring plays by a black author telling “black stories”. However, this is the first time that they have been introduced in the heart of commercial theater and its major West End productions, where the average price of tickets is often around 150 euros and can go up to 400 euros.
Warnings to the audience before each play
Speaking on the BBC, Jeremy O Harris said he was delighted to have introduced the concept of Black Out in London and is delighted that “this radical and necessary invitation” is addressed exclusively to those who generally feel excluded from these places of culture. However, he does not say whether he also intends to make the price of tickets “radically” accessible to those who would like to come to the theater more often.
These evenings particularly provoked a reaction from the British conservative press as Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail who pointed out the racism. Some theater critics favorable to these events, such as Andrzej Lukowski, of Time Out, believes that the subject is a cultural war between reactionaries and progressives. “We have never forbidden white spectators not to come to these evenings, we respectfully ask them to come another evening, it is not the same,” he justifies, with a touch of bad faith.
British theaters have also had to, for several years, introduce “warnings” before each play to warn their audiences that they could be shocked by racist, offensive, discriminatory, violent words or situations or even… that certain characters smoke on stage. scene. Recently, the great actor Ralph Fiennes, on tour with Macbethsaid he was opposed to these warnings or trigger warnings. “Shakespeare’s plays are riddled with murder and a lot of horror. As a young student, fortunately I was not warned that in King Lear, Gloucester’s character had his eyes gouged out. The public must be shocked, it is the beauty of theater to make people think.” It remains to be seen whether Othello tomorrow will be reserved for the Moors…
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