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When You’re 29 and Have a Broadway Sensation
With the incendiary ‘Slave Play,’ Jeremy O. Harris became the youngest Black man to have his work staged on Broadway. What comes next?
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
“A couple white people snuck in tonight, but I’m fine with that,” says Jeremy O. Harris, seated cross-legged on stage in a wide denim skirt. It’s mid-September, and the 30-year-old playwright is basking in historic victory: A preview performance of his Slave Play filled every seat inside the John Golden Theater, nearly all of them by a Black attendee. In attendance was a beautiful brown spectrum of fashionistas and style gods, artists, journalists — but perhaps most important were the young boys and girls who appreciate F. Gary Gray and Tyler Perry scripts as much as those by Adrienne Kennedy and Alice Childress. Those who can’t afford a $200 theater seat, who have become accustomed to feeling excluded by the world of Broadway. These new theatergoers are exactly why Harris made the choice to sacrifice profit for awareness and sell Slave Play tickets for as low as $39. And if the old guard finds itself in front of the Virginia native’s polarizing work, so be it; they’re welcome too. “It’s good,” Harris says. “They…
