The world premiere of Jeremy O. Harris' Slave Play, directed by Robert O'Hara, will run for an additional two weeks at New York Theatre Workshop. The new play, which is the recipient of numerous awards, began previews November 19 ahead of a December 9 opening night.
Performances will now continue through January 13, 2019.
The cast of Slave Play is made up of Ato Blankson-Wood (Hair) as Gary, James Cusati-Moyer (Six Degrees of Separation) as Dustin, Sullivan Jones (The Looming Tower) as Phillip, Chalia La Tour (The Review or How to Eat Your Competition) as Teá, Irene Sofia Lucio (Love and Information) as Patricia, Annie McNamara (Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf) as Alana, Paul Alexander Nolan (Escape to Margaritaville) as Jim, and Teyonah Parris (If Beale Street Could Talk) as Kaneisha.
Read: MEET PLAYWRIGHT JEREMY O. HARRIS
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. 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.
The production features scenic design by Clint Ramos (Torch Song), costume design by Dede Ayite (American Son), lighting design by Jiyoun Chang (Plot Points in Our Sexual Development), sound design by Lindsay Jones (Feeding the Dragon), properties by Noah Mease (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire), and movement by Byron Easley (Langston in Harlem). Claire Warden (Intimacy Directors International) serves as the intimacy and fight director; Amauta Marston-Firmino (managing editor at Theater Magazine) serves as dramaturg, Dawn-Elin Fraser (Once on This Island) is the dialect Coach, and Jhanaë K-C Bonnick (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) is stage manager.
Slave Play was developed and produced at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference earlier this summer. The play is the recipient of the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and The Lotos Foundation Prize in the Arts and Sciences.
Harris' other full-length works include Daddy, which will premiere Off-Broadway this winter in a co-production from The New Group and The Vineyard Theater; Xander Xyst, Dragon: 1, and Water Sports; Or Insignificant White Boys. He is the recipient of the 2018–19 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award; Harris is also a 2016 MacDowell Colony Fellow, an Orchard Project Greenhouse artist, resident playwright with Colt Coeur, and under commission from Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons.
For more information on Slave Play visit NYTW.org.
