Does the Slave Play documentary change how we feel about the show?

With the release of the doc Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play., culture critic Kathleen Newman-Bremang and award-winning playwright Amanda Parris join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the controversial stage production that inspired it, and its creator Jeremy O. Harris's provocative approach to addressing U.S. slavery, interracial relationships and anti-Blackness.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Kathleen, you were able to see Slave Play on stage in Los Angeles. What was it like for you? 

Kathleen: It was the wildest theatre experience I have ever had in my life. I'm not exaggerating. I don't love spoilers, so I didn't look into what Slave Play was about before I saw it.

Elamin: You just went in cold.

Kathleen: I had no idea. I had avoided the premise, and maybe I'm naive, but the name didn't give it away either. I literally thought I was about to watch a play about slavery in the South. So when the veil is pulled away and it's revealed that it's [about] these people engaging in couples therapy, and doing "slave play," like, sexually, I almost walked out of the theatre. I was shocked, and I thought, "Thank God I didn't bring my white husband to this." Because the stuff explored in this play is not for the faint of heart. That's not a compliment. 

It's aiming to shock you, and offend you, and make you laugh in moments that are really uncomfortable — like a Black character is about to get whipped and the audience is supposed to laugh. It was wild to watch something like that. I think you can have these discussions in a productive way, but it should be an intra-community conversation. It's a Black playwright working through his own issues, clearly, and in theory for Black audiences; we can talk about who we think the audience is. But it was really strange to watch that in a theater mostly full of white people…. It was an unsettling experience overall, I will say.

Elamin: Jeremy O. Harris's new HBO documentary about Slave Play gives us some insight into his creative process. It reminds us just how different the creative process can be for playwrights, particularly in the internet era. I'm curious, Amanda, what do you make of what Jeremy was saying?

Amanda: I found the documentary really curious because he avoided all personal connection to the texts. He didn't talk about his personal history, and I think that that's a bit of a lie. He wrote an article way back in 2016 talking about his desire to decolonize his own desire, and talking about his lifelong attraction to white men and this attraction to being part of the social capital of being in exclusive white spaces, and reading every play, movie, book that he could to feel like he knew this obscure white knowledge that could make him the token Black person that could be invited into these exclusive spaces. I feel like so much of that is threaded throughout Slave Play. 

But what I think he wasn't prepared for was the Black audience reaction to it, which was very mixed. He admitted at the time the play came out that he wasn't prepared at all for the vitriol and outrage that came from Black audiences, because he had been so consumed by thinking about the controversy that it would create in white audiences. So his creative process, I think, is informed by the internet, but I think there's a personal journey that he went through in creating this that he doesn't unpack in this documentary, and I find that a really huge missing piece of the puzzle— and probably the most interesting piece, to me.

Elamin: Kathleen, do you think this documentary has changed your discomfort about Slave Play in a way?

Kathleen: No. I think it made me like it even less. 

Elamin: Oh, wow. Okay, go off.

Kathleen: Which I didn't know was possible. The documentary is a mess. It's honestly mostly nonsense…. It's just him kind of wanting to hear himself speak. It doesn't confront any of those valid criticisms of the play from Black audiences — that it doesn't give enough historical context, or dig in a meaningful way into how white supremacy can show up in intimate interracial relationships. It doesn't go deeper into the controversy other than to say that there was some. 

I just expected more insight. I was expecting it to change my feelings, and I wanted it to. I wanted this doc to crystallize it for me, like, "that's what I was missing. Maybe something did go over my head in the way that Jeremy O. Harris wanted to confront his own inner anti-Blackness and self-hatred." I do think the play touches on that a little bit, but it doesn't get there. And I wanted that doc to get there, and it doesn't. It didn't make me like the play anymore. It didn't change it at all for me.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.