Kirjahaku

The Old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation - in the breeze in the cotton fields...and in the crack of the whip. Nothing is as it seems and yet everything is as it seems. Slave Play rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race gender and sexuality in 21st-century America."Slave Play is the single most daring thing I've seen in a theater in a long time." - Wesley Morris The New York Times"Uncomfortably funny and gruesomely sexy. Should you laugh or keep quiet? You can't know until the ordeal is done - and even then the uncertainty may linger for days." - Vinson Cunningham The New Yorker"Wisdom and timeliness ripple through Slave Play. This play is lit."- Soraya Nadia McDonald The Undefeated

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.

Franklin, a young black artist on the eve of his first show, meets Andre, an older white art collector, and before long their feverish connection develops into an unbreakable bond. But when Franklin's mother, Zora, decides that her son is in peril, she enters into a battle of wills with Andre over the soul of the man they both call 'baby'. Basquiats and Birkins, gospel and pop, fantasy and reality: all collide around a Bel Air swimming pool in this deeply surreal exploration of intimacy and identity. "Daddy" is Jeremy O. Harris's blistering melodrama, first performed in New York City in 2019, and at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2022, directed by Danya Taymor.

At the MacGregor Plantation the Old South is alive and well. The heat in the air, the cotton fields – and the power of the whip. Yet nothing is quite as it appears... or maybe it is. Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender and sexuality in twenty-first-century America. Iconic, controversial and groundbreaking, it opened at New York Theatre Workshop in 2018, transferred to Broadway the following year, and was nominated for twelve Tony Awards. It received its British premiere at the Noël Coward Theatre in London's West End in 2024, directed by Robert O'Hara.