Theater News

Slave Play Will Have West Coast Premiere at Mark Taper Forum

Jeremy O. Harris’s dark comedy will be directed by Robert O’Hara.

Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, Joaquina Kalukango, Irene Sofia Lucio, Sullivan Jones, Annie McNamara, Paul Alexander Nolan, and James Cusati-Moyer star in Slave Play on Broadway.
Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, Joaquina Kalukango, Irene Sofia Lucio, Sullivan Jones, Annie McNamara, Paul Alexander Nolan, and James Cusati-Moyer star in Slave Play on Broadway.
(© Matthew Murphy)

Center Theater Group will present the West Coast premiere of Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play during its 2020-21 season at the Mark Taper Forum. Dates and casting are still to be announced.

Robert O'Hara will direct. The creative team includes Clint Ramos (scenic design), Dede Ayite (costume design), Jiyoun Chang (lighting design), Lindsay Jones (sound design and original music), Amauta Marston-Firmino (dramaturg), Byron Easley (movement), Claire Warden (intimacy and fight director), and Doug Nevin (production counsel).

In Slave Play, "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."