The blatantly racist black only theatre nights seems to have backfired somewhat.
Chaos has engulfed a controversial West End play which is selling tickets for ‘black-only’ nights after one of the two dates vanished from its website.
Slave Play which is being held at the Noel Coward Theatre later this year has come under fire after announcing it will have two performances aimed at an ‘all-black-identifying audience’ that is ‘free from the white gaze’.
Producers, who say they want to ‘increase accessibility to theatre’, had said it would hold these performances on July 17 and September 17, with tickets being sold for as much £125.
However, the latter of these has vanished from the show’s website, with potential buyers given no option to buy tickets for a show on September 17, and no performance being listed for this date.
The people behind the show have said they are now ‘carefully considering’ how to incorporate the ‘black out’ nights as part of its run and insisted ‘no-one will be prevented or precluded from attending any performance’.
So, er, they are backtracking. Sooner or later there will be a big enough groundswell against this kind of racist behaviour that such people will slink away from the limelight. And that whirring noise you hear, that’s MLK and Rosa Parks spinning in their graves.
The playwright behind the show, Jeremy O Harris, had previously claimed the nights would allow black theatregoers ‘to feel safe with a lot of other black people in a place where they often do not feel safe’.
In a fucking theatre. Who does he think he is, Abraham Lincoln?
‘Obviously, these reports are concerning and further information is being sought.
‘But clearly, restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.’
And presumably illegal, given that we have a race relations act on the statute book that specifically precludes discrimination on the basis of race. Or is it okay to be racist if you are black? *Rhetorical question.
One of the issues that struck me was that ‘Black’ to a white person seems far more homogenous as a group than it does to all the different black peoples. Would the all Black audience be subtly uncomfortable with others who were ‘not black enough’? Or would the audience segregate into Black Muslims, Black Christians, Black Jews and so on?
What probably seemed like a ‘right on’ judgement has just illuminated one of the difficulties with identity politics.
Blacktracking indeed.
Oh, very good Timbotoo!
Haha! I can guess what happened. Tickets £125 + black audience = financial ruin.
They just couldn’t sell any tickets to black people, if you get Lenny Henry and whom ever that doesn’t pay the production.
Hilarious!
You might call it pure racism but I don’t think it is that simple: it is some sort of power play.
Jeremy O Harris tried this on Broadway in 2019 with the same play and it was tried in early 2023 in Canada with a different play. I don’t think that either took place as a black only event.
I assume arrangements have been made for the lighting, technicians, front of house staff,etc, to be black on the black only day. And what about the actors? Shirley they will all be black too? Go black, get the sack.
Interesting. On this basis, it is perfectly okay for a play to advertise ‘whites-only nights’ on the basis that the punters would feel safe in such an environment.
I think that the problem might be an excess of government and council created non-jobs. Just loads of people being paid with taxpayer’s money who have nothing to actually do with their time. The devil makes work for idle hands so they say and this kind of stuff is what you end up with.
If you want to see it, identify yourself as black. Simple.
Can’t afford the boot polish.
I did look up this “play” and just reading the precis was enough.
It truly is difficult to imagine the hellish torture sitting through this mind numbing shite would be for any creature more intellectually developed than a slime mould.
No whites allowed?
Apart from self loathing white “liberals”, who the fuck do they imagine is capable of the sado-masochistic self torture required to actually endure it?
Well, yes, you couldn’t pay me to sit thought such self-indulgent wank.
I’d like to think that this experience will make them take a long, hard look at their own prejudices and preconceptions, and maybe ask themselves if they’ve been sold a pup with all this identity politics business.
But it won’t, will it?