I must admit – I liked “Slave Play” very much. Let me explain why.

This could also be an unpopular opinion, but I must live in reality. I saw Slave Play on Broadway and loved it. I liked it a lot that I featured Jeremy O. Harris on my Touré Show podcast and watched his latest HBO documentarySlave game. Not a movie. Game” last Friday, the day of the premiere. I know many black people didn’t prefer it “Slave Play” for various reasons – and plenty of white people were very provoked – but I had an amazing time. I love art that’s difficult.

“Slave Play” punches you within the face intellectually immediately, using slavery, sex and interracial relationships as a approach to shock, titillate and liberate people. I think some black people see these three things on stage – slavery, sex and interracial relations – and immediately shut down. I think it’s crazy to interact in interracial slave play in real life. It can do incredible damage to a Black person’s spirit. But art is a spot where we are able to explore ideas which can be too dangerous to use to real life. When we provide you with these ideas inside a play written by a black man attempting to grapple with the impact that slavery has on the psyche of a contemporary African American, I think it’s honest, and within the case of Slave Play, it’s good. Harris doesn’t exploit slavery in any flippant way; I accept that it has influenced us and that we want to exorcise. Ultimately, the people on stage engage in an exorcism intended to extract a few of the pain of slavery from the black characters.

Black characters do that through interracial relationships that place black and white people in conflict and permit black characters to work through their feelings against the backdrop of their interactions with whiteness. These are Black individuals who love certain white people and at the identical time are outwardly critical of whiteness. I find it irresistible. This could also be triggering for some people, but that is the way it’s presupposed to be. There ought to be art sometimes.

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I love black art that goals to evoke and does so for smart reasons. I think art is an amazing place to initiate difficult conversations. I love visual art by Kara Walker, which attracts deeply on tropes of slavery. Her work could be each painful and liberating. I loved “12 years a slave”, although it was difficult to bear such a grim and sad visualization of slavery. I loved “Django without chains“way more because he used slavery as a backdrop to speak concerning the power of self-confidence in a black man. Throughout the film, Django’s self-belief gives him the ability to outsmart white supremacy. “Django” is a movie that depicts brutal scenes of slavery, in addition to the lifetime of a slave who escaped from the clutches of slavery and is in a position to whip the slave master and destroy the slavery plantation. What’s not to like concerning the story of a slave striking back against slavery?

Artistic discussions about slavery ought to be sensitive and provocative. This should not be a simple topic. That could be an insult to how improper slavery was. But I don’t mind if talented artists take me on a discussion that’s grounded in the subject of slavery, so long as they do it in a respectful way. “Slave Play” meets these criteria for me.

“Slave Play” asserts that slavery continues to be a component of us – the way it still haunts us – and says that we must discuss it and face it so as to develop into our greatest selves.

It’s vital to me that black art is black-centric. I can all the time tell when creators are really focused on their black audience and when they are not. “Slave Play” is totally black since it focuses on black characters and offers them a greater emotional range. In the documentary, Harris talks about how he gave black characters so way more.

The documentary shares the history of the play and Harris’ notes for the actors, which is able to aid you understand “Playing Slaves” on a deeper level. I think the play is a monumental murals that dives into a component of the black psyche that few of us need to visit. But that is the tricky part.