Official: Jeremy O. Harris' SLAVE PLAY Will Open at the Golden Theatre This Fall

BroadwayWorld first reported last month that SLAVE PLAY will come to Broadway this fall. Producers Greg Nobile and Jana Shea of Seaview Productions, Troy Carter, Level Forward, and Nine Stories, founded by Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker, have now officially announced that the acclaimed new play by Jeremy O. Harris, directed by Robert O'Hara, will be coming to Broadway's Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street) this fall. The strictly limited 17-week engagement will begin preview performances Tuesday, September 10, ahead of an official opening night of Sunday, October 6.

Presale tickets to Slave Play are available exclusively to Audience Rewards® members now through Saturday, July 13, at 9:59 AM. For more information, visit www.AudienceRewards.com.

Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning Saturday, July 13, 2019, at 10 AM, and will be available at www.slaveplaybroadway.com, Telecharge.com, or by calling 1-800-447-7400.

To help ensure that the production is accessible to all ticket buyers, the producers have confirmed that 10,000 tickets will be made available at $39 each throughout the 17-week run.

When it premiered last fall, Slave Play immediately became the most talked about play of the year, garnered intense critical acclaim, stunned audiences with its unflinching examination of race and sex, and hailed Harris as "one of the most promising playwrights of his generation" (Chloe Schama, Vogue).

With the Broadway premiere of this "explosive, raw, and very funny piece of theater about race, sex, and power" (Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast), Harris becomes the sixth black writer to have a new play on Broadway in the last decade.

Prepare for "the single most daring thing I've seen in theater in a long time" (Wesley Morris, The New York Times).

Harris said, "During my very short time being a professional writer, the world I thought I'd inhabit was one at odds with a commercial theatrical landscape; so to see that this play, Slave Play, that interrogates the traumas Americans have inherited from the legacy of chattel slavery and colonization has a place in the canon of work that has made its way to Broadway is both exhilarating and humbling. It also articulates that the leaps the community made in the past Broadway season might not have been a fad but the beginning of a new moment for the theater to once again attempt to represent discursive American theatrical expression not situated solely within the imaginaries of cis white men, but the imaginaries of all Americans."

O'Hara said, "I'm thrilled as a black queer artist to be collaborating with another black queer artist on what will be both of our Broadway debuts. I think the idea that I can say that openly and proudly is rather profound given the history of our country and of the American theater, but more specifically Broadway which has had and continues to have a general lack of diversity and diverse stories. I feel that Jeremy is joined today by a whole host of exciting young artists who are telling stories outside the main stem which can now hopefully be presented on the main stem. As the margin slowly becomes the center, I believe a cavalcade of voices one would never expect to be heard on Broadway can be and should be demanded. Slave Play is a complex, challenging and exhilarating piece of work and I look forward to presenting it this fall on Broadway."

The published edition of Slave Play is currently available in the July/August issue of American Theatre Magazine.

The Old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation - in the breeze, in the cotton fields...and in the crack of the whip. It's an antebellum fever-dream, where fear and desire entwine in the looming shadow of the Master's House. Jim trembles as Kaneisha handles melons in the cottage, Alana perspires in time with the plucking of Phillip's fiddle in the boudoir, while Dustin cowers at the heel of Gary's big, black boot in the barn. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems.

The creative team for the production includes Tony Award® winner Clint Ramos (scenic design), four-time Drama Desk Award nominee Dede Ayite(costume design), Drama Desk Award nominee Jiyoun Chang (lighting design), three-time Drama Desk Award nominee Lindsay Jones (sound design and original music), Amauta Marston-Firmino (dramaturg), Byron Easley (movement), Claire Warden (intimacy and fight director), Doug Nevin(production counsel), and Taylor Williams (casting director). Mark Shacket serves as Executive Producer.

Casting for the Broadway premiere of Slave Play will be announced in the coming weeks.

Slave Play is the recipient of the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, The Lotos Foundation Prize in the Arts and Sciences, and the 2018 Paula Vogel Award. The play was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle's John Gassner Playwrighting Award and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play.