“Slave Play” will return to Broadway this fall for an eight-week engagement.
The news, announced by playwright Jeremy O. Harris early Monday at a party for the production, followed a Tony Awards ceremony that shut out the play from all of its 12 nominations. “Slave Play,” directed by Robert O’Hara, originally ran at Broadway’s Golden Theatre from September 2019 to January 2020.
In its return engagement, “Slave Play” will run at the August Wilson Theatre from Nov. 23 through Jan. 23. Following the Broadway run, the play will move to the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.
The return will include original cast members Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Annie McNamara, and Paul Alexander Nolan. Antoinette Crowe-Legacy will join the cast to play Kaneisha, a role that Harris originally wrote for Crowe-Legacy. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
“‘Slave Play’s’ return engagement marks for me a chance for New York and the world to re-meet a play that many met at New York Theatre Workshop and Broadway in 2018 and 2019, and that thousands of others met in its published edition in a year when theaters around the world were dark,” Harris said. “To be doing it in 2021 with the Kaneisha who originated the role at Yale and members of the original cast fills me with the same joy I had I had watching the play for the very first time in a classroom five years ago.”
The production will enact many accessibility measures during its run, including a promise to sell 10,400 tickets for $39 — double the commitment producers made during its initial run. “Slave Play” will also resume its Black Out performances, in which the theater is filled with invited, Black-identifying patrons.
“Slave Play” is produced by Seaview Productions, Troy Carter, Level Forward, and Nine Stories, Sing Out, Louise! Productions, Shooting Star Productions, Roth-Manella Productions, Carlin Katler Productions, Cohen Hopkins Productions.
