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My guess tonight is the playwright they critically acclaimed Slave Play in making his directorial debut with the new HBO documentary Slave Play. Not a movie, a play. Please welcome jereme O Harris.
Welcome.
The first off.
Congratulations on your directorial debut.
Thank you.
I saw it last nights. It's fantastic for now. It's a movie based on a play, Slave Play for folks who didn't know slave Play twelve tony nominations, utshell? What a slave Play for people who didn't weren't cool enough like myself to go see it?
You know, I say this in the dock, and I'm going to keep saying it till dad die. I don't tell people what slave Place is about it, No, I mean it's it's you know, listen, it's more fun if you don't know.
If you go in a little confused, but you can also just go to Wikipedia. You on Twitter, just post the Wikipedia article.
I was in New York when Slave Play came out, which was just before the pandemic. Yeah, when it when it moved to Broadway, and it was it was it was all the talk. Nobody would tell you what it was about. But people were angry. People like it was great, but it was something that I think you found unity and that you pissed off people of all races.
Absolutely.
Yes, Yeah, I'm a Gemini, so I'm an equal opportunity offender. People are like that guy all the time. Can you say that here? I don't know, you can say whatever the hell you want.
Great, right, So you do slave play? Right?
But then you make a documentary about slave play? Why make a documentary? And when night write a book? Were you afraid Florida would ban it?
Yes? Absolutely?
I mean actually I was afraid of my home state, Virginia would band it. I mean, like, who knows most of the places I've been are banning the books. But no, I didn't want to make a documentary to begin once. I didn't know. I literally the title of the movie comes from an email I sent to a very big movie studio. I'm not gonna say which one you can guess. You can guess, and I guess try Warner Brothers.
Now, I'm just kidding. They know, but they they're like, we want to make slave Play into a movie.
And another one was like, we want to make slave Plan into a TV show. And I said, slave Play is not a movie, period, it is a play, period.
And sent it.
And then when HBO, so here's the nitty gritty. In twenty twenty, our play left the Golden Theater because it was gonna close early. I mean because another show was coming in. Mar McDonald show was coming in the Hangman. Sorry, this is long, it's so stupid.
Anyway, the Hangar's coming in. We couldn't go. We couldn't be in that theater anymore.
And then someone was like, hey, another played is on Brabe right now, is going to close early, so you can take that theater. We're like what, and they're like, yes, you can sign the papers March fourteenth, twenty twenty. We're like yes, and they were like and they were like, all you need to do it is an extra I don't know. I'm gonna say a number, but it's probably not real. Fifty thousand, and I was like, great, I just signed a deal with HBO. HBO does documentaries. My
friend filmed the last day. My friend was a very famous documentarian. He had filmed our last performance. I was like, what if the documentary is like they're closing. No, no, oh, it's so sad.
Then bam it's open to get on Broadway. You never expected that for a black play.
So so I was, I was gonna do this little hat trick documentary.
And I signed the papers and they gave us some money.
And then March routeenth happened and I was stuck in a home in I was stuck at a place in Finsbury Park in London. I was, I had COVID in London.
That's lovely. It was a very British review, guys. I only did it because I didn't want to. I wanted to get in an alien environment. I didn't want to be like I didn't want to see like.
You know, Canal Street empty, like that would be that would actually mean I was in a horror movie. If you don't see those little weird, little upside down buses like on the street, you don't know that it should be there.
You know, Wait, do you think double decker buses are upside down.
You look a little upside down.
I feel like it's like if someone made a double decker bus a cake, they would call it like some sort of version of an upside down or like inside out, like.
A topsy turvy gig are full of shit.
Anyway, So then twenty twenty one comes around, HBO calls and they're like, hey, we wrote a check for your for you to write this documentary. You cash the money during twenty twenty, where's the doc? And I was like, oh, yeah, got it. I'm supposed to make a dock And so then the next the last three years, I've been learning how to make a movie by making this doc. And the doc is just it is just theater supremacy. Like
I say, it's not a movie, it's a play. And the whole spoiler alert from my movie, guys, the end of the movie basically articulates why plays are better than movies.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know.
Listen, And as I say there, one art form is new and one art form is old. We've only been making movies since the beginning of the twentieth century.
They're already trying to take that away from us. They're not trying to get.
Computers to make them now, So I'm like, they're not gonna get computers to make plays. People barely see them, no one wants to pay for them. So cheap making play and changing lives of people are everywhere. And speaking of which, this is a lot, but I I'm producing a play right now.
It's called Invasive Species. It's at the Vineyard Theater. And I want to give you this hat merch merch.
Go to a play and your mind change and.
Leave with some fricking merch. Invasive Species. Yeah, I love it?
Now you do you do articulate in the movie Why You Love Theater? Right? And I will say we talked a little bit backstage, and it is true. I went to go see Slave Play with my wife and a friend and we left slave Play and we were like, we need to go talk about this.
And you don't get.
That with a lot of a lot of a lot of experiences anymore, right, we really make space to actually try to parse something and try to find where the meaning is what it meant to us. And I think Slave Play was one that pushed a lot of buttons but started a lot of conversations like yes, you're a theater supremacist.
But you are the only supremacists you can be. That's yeah, it's.
A good one, right, Yeah, if you're gonna pick one. But how do you still use the I use the medium of film to start those convers Well.
I mean I think that like one of the things that I grew up on was like this sort of theatrical effemora that like sort of created a generation of people who like theater. I mean, the people who are watching the plays on Brober right now are all a golden generation of people who are the same age as every congressman and senator, meaning that sure they're not long
for this earth, yes, and they're amazing. But when they were seeing when they were seeing plays, they were also going home and watching television shows or hearing radio plays on the thing, and theater was everywhere around them.
We had, you know, we had a taste of it was like inside the actress.
Studio or like those amazing like Uda Hog and videos of her like talking to weird actors and smoking in the room, and like there were like you know, company the Pennybacker doc where you saw like you know, all of these amazing, you know, phenomenal actors struggling and failing in front of you to make the company soundtrack.
Company was a failure on Broadway.
But they made a documentary about it when it came out because people cared about the Effemora Theater. What happened when live people got together and did a thing right? And now the only time we do that. We care about you guys. You guys are great comedy. We let comedy do it.
But like, thank you a pretty scanda.
But I think that like, as a culture, we should care about the life theatrical experience outside of just sn L, the Daily Show, you know, mad TV when it was here. You know, we should care about We should care about the people in Oklahoma who like, are gathering around to tell the story of Black Wall Street in a play in the middle of Tulsa.
Because that play, it.
Might seem small, it's not as big as a movie. It won't be seen by two hundred million people. But the two hundred people a night that see that play will leave talking about it, even if they're talk about how much they hate it And.
What do you think that is?
Though, Like, I mean, I totally agree with you, but do you think that is because it is a communal experience because we're all in a space together, which we also get in movie theaters. And people still talk about how horror films do so well because you have this shared fear in a space, and comedy films do well
in that sense. Or is it the fact that film has gotten so good at replicating reality or taking us to feats of fantasy and that theaters still live space for for imagination that we can't fill in the gaps like where do you see the special sauce in that?
I think that, Like, so, there are definitely filmmakers and films that like don't ask you to have a passive imagination.
A lot of films do, though.
I think a film that required you to like lean in past your your passivity was like Zone Adventures from last year, right, a movie that like like you're you're in that movie and he's holding onto you tight, and he's like you can you better watch and make sense of all this and fill in the blanks yourself, right, because there's a lot on the corners you have to fill in. Most movies don't give you that space. They don't trust their audience enough. Players have to by the
very nature of being going to play. If I'm going to play and I tell you that I'm going to Mars, You'll believe it, whether there's special effects doing it or not, because I've just told you I'm going to Mars and you have to buy it, because I think the contract you signed to going to the theater.
Again, that's why a lot of people don't like it.
It can be bad like see like I'm going to Mars.
You're like no, I mean there is something to that.
That moment is an invit to the audience and we all have to agree on the inherent silliness of believing something.
Yes, right, and but that conversation, that belief inside of a micro community right, It is so necessary for the for political change in my opinion, because I think that when you when you when you worked really hard to see the same thing with a bunch of people around you, when you leave, you want to engage with them to talk about how the ideas inside of the thing you just you just saw or whatever can be tangibly made manifest in reality and not just in this fantasy you've engaged.
Do you see it? And that's interesting?
You see that you see that as possible in film or wider, wider art forms that can reach more people, And is the is somebody dropping the ball on that, like doing are we not engaging the ability to use some of these other art forms to have these conversations to an act more?
I think are people are doing it all over?
I mean, like there's amazing painters, amazing performance artists, amazing musicians who are gotting, Like you know, Mustafa the poet just made this amazing song that just came out the other day that I think it's galvant is an entire entire community of people around like thinking about Goza in
a different way on a musical level, right. I think that like one of the things that one of the things I don't want us to lose though, is like in our in our in the ease of Netflix and and Max and whatever channel you're watching this on, I don't know, you might be streaming.
It or stealing it, streaming stealing.
Whatever we're watching it liter COmON Central, thank you very.
Much, But no matter how, no matter how you might have gotten this, I don't I don't want the other tools in our toolboxes as a society to get lost along the way because this is easier, right, like going
to a theater is hard. Getting forty people together to make a thing happen every night for for weeks is difficult, you know, and and and and yet it's a necessity because I think it it helps us see, and it helps us scene imagine in a different way, and the same way that a painting comes you see imagine a different way than a novel, the same way that like a novel helps you see and imagine a different way than a poem. And what a poem can do in
forty words is like so delicious. You don't want that to fall away just because like I don't know.
We can tweet now, right, I mean, which is still pretty fun. It's so fun.
Slave Play is about to open in London, yes, right, And there's been a little drama in London.
Oh god, oh god. I try not to talk about this.
Well you're on TV now, man, buckle up.
I did. I did give you the hat, so I think you give me that, so you gotta give me the drama. Drama.
Look, you do something to call blackout dates, right, and I'll let you what is it? What is a blackout date?
So okay, I've done Okay, London, Hi, I'm so so so so sorry you think.
We have that reach.
I think we really are speaking in London.
I don't know. Listen, this is television, it's not a theater. It can go everywhere there go speak to speak to love London.
I am so so sorry that my BBC interview about a thing I had done in than a year prior calls so much ire this time. I don't know why I didn't do it to cause any ire, But I do think that, both in America and in the UK, thinking about the architecture of who's in your audience matters.
Right, Having an audience of.
People like this is what comedians do every time they have someone come on and warm up the audience, and they warm them up specifically, right, Like, if you're gonna do like an audience of like college bros, you better arm whoever's going out there to know what.
Kind of humor gets them going. Right.
Yes, I think that we have to think about the architecture of the audiences that we've invited into a play. My play London is a really intense play about race, trauma, colonization, et cetera.
And because of that.
When you are a black person or a brown person in that audience. It can feel complex to sit next to a white person. Now that complexity was a part of the play. I wanted that. I love a mixed audience. That's how I grew up, that's how the plays. The play is a mixed play. Yet had an audience member asked me, what would this feel like to see the show with only black people? Can you give me that? And I said, why not. It'll only be one or two nights. So we did two nights where it was
where I only invited black people. Now you could come if you wanted to. Tanya Pinkins brought a white friend. She was like, I wanted to know what it's like when I go see a.
Check off play.
And I was like, that's great, But it was mainly black people.
It's Kiki Palmer was there.
It was like, you know, the kid from NYU that DM me the night before, being like me and all the Black student Union want to come. And it was the first time that I saw my play and everyone everyone.
In the audience laughed when I laughed when I was writing.
It, which was crazy because when you see my play, and I think there's a lot a lot of times that white people are nervous about when they're laughing, and when black people are nervous when they're laughing, and no one wants to give the other people permissioned to laugh because like you see someone laughing, like what you're laughing at? And then you laugh and they're like, well, why are they laughing? And it's like becomes this whole thing. You
see the races. That was a little the race voice play I did there, but.
Crazy.
Thanks guys, you're also seen.
I mean, I think what you're when you're speaking to is something that there is a play that's happening on stage right. But what is also compelling in this experience is the tension that we're experiencing in the theater and if we're given this space to articulate that and think through what we are feeling based on what we're seeing other people react to that and of itself is a separate performance and you're trying to curate that in a different lens.
That's how I came up with the why did you tell London? Because I didn't. You did it. You did it so well, you know.
But at Yale when I did this way Yale, which is like a part of the thing I don't I should put this in the movie.
Yeah, you know what, I wanted the movie to be short. I don't think movie should be that long. So think about sequel. Yeah, it'll be in the extra bits on HBO Max.
But but when we did it at Yale, it was the first time. I was the woke class at Yale, Like the class where they told us, this is the most diverse we've ever had a student body at.
Yale for the first time ever.
Yeah, there's the same number of men and women in the class of actors who.
Are like what in twenty sixteen.
Absolutely were they saying that while they were patting themselves on the back.
Absolutely, absolutely, and no shades are teachers. They were great, they were they were trying whatever.
Anyway, we had a lot of people of color and women for the first time in our in our class. Again, for years, no acting conservatory in the country had as many women as men. You know, why not as many roles for women? What are gonna do with all those women? There's not no roles?
Instead of just saying why don't we.
Find plays where there or invite writers to write more roles for women by just having an influx of them.
Yes, they just said we need less we have three sisters.
We only have three sisters sisters, so anyway, it's Uncle Vin, it's not keep moving.
But at Yale.
One of the cool things and interesting things about going to yalees that you're in a community. You're in a full town called New Haven, where there are people who saw Lapita and Leander do her first play at Yale. So not only are you watching people like not only are people who are watching all the students play as the student body, it's also a bunch of like older mainly white people who have seen every play that's ever
been at Yale watching the plays too. And my play was in a three quarter thrust and when slave Plays started, because it was so small, you could see everyone seeing everything. So imagine seeing like thirty young black brown kids right here and then right across the road road for them, also lit by the lights, like fifty older white people just like looking and like and the laughs are like ha ha, And then everyone gets really nervous and scared.
And then people felt implicated because they're like, why are they looking at me so much? A're looking at me so much? It's like, no, they weren't even looking at you. They're looking at the play, but it looks like they're looking at you because they're looking right here.
Yeah.
And so when we did the when we were doing playoffs, like the play has to happened in the round. It has to happen in the round. And New York City Workshop was like, we can't afford the round. But Clint Ramos and Robert O'Hara my director, and my director is Robert Clint is the set designer.
We're like, we got this.
Put those mirrors back there, mirrors behind it all, and the entire show.
You get to watch people watch the play, and like that becomes the play for me in so many ways, like watching people squirm. It's fun for me, yes, and it's fun for other people. Yet like the first time you see you'll be squirming.
You won't like it. It'll be like, I don't know how I to feeling about this. But then the.
Second time you come, the third time you come, you get to watch everyone else you look I know the secret, you know.
And for a narcissist, it's great for me because I can just watch myself phone.
No, I mean, look at you.
You look so great, thank you, very blue eyes, beautiful, right, they are?
They are you get lost? Guys.
See, these are the types of conversations we should be having. The documentary Slave Play Not a movie, A play Well debut June twentieth, HBO and available to stream on Max. Also go see Invasive Species. This is Jereme o'harris.
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