The creative team and producers behind Broadway’s Slave Play voiced their support for the Black Lives Matter movement in a statement yesterday (June 3) and donated $10,000 to the National Bailout Fund.
“For too long we have witnessed Black bodies be made objects to consume and destroy by agents of white supremacy, as Black people have been forced to fight for their right to be. This week across out nation Black voices have yelled out as one to say ‘Enough is enough,'” the social media statement read. “The creative team and producers of Slave Play stand with voices across the world to say ‘Black lives matter’ with a recognition that the work we can do and have done on Broadway is very different than the work being done on the ground today.”
Jeremy O. Harris debuted the three-act play in 2018, which focuses on three interracial couples undergoing Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy because the black partners, who serve the roles of slave, mulatto servant and Black overseer, don’t feel attracted to their white partners, who serve the roles of master, mistress and indentured servant.
“We thank those giving their blood, sweat, tears, and putting their lives on the line to ensure the myriad freedoms Black people are denied on the daily. The primary freedom being the freedom to live, a freedom that was denied of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, David McAtee, Tony McDade, James Scurlock, George Floyd, and a litany of others we have had to witness in gruesome detail year after year,” the statement continued.
The team behind Slave Play encouraged its community to match its $10,000 donation to the National Bailout Fund, a Black-led collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists supporting Black people who are still suffering in the systems of pretrial detention and mass incarceration.
Read Slave Play‘s entire statement below.
