The world premiere of Jeremy O. Harris' multi-award winning Slave Play, directed by Robert O'Hara, has found its cast for the upcoming New York Theatre Workshop engagement. The new work is described by NYTW an "antebellum fever-dream" on the MacGregor Plantation, where nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems.
The cast will be 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.
Slave Play will begin performances November 19 ahead of a December 9 opening night at NYTW. The limited engagement is scheduled to run through December 30.
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 will feature 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 Fan Zhang (Seven Guitars), and properties by Noah Mease (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire). Movement will be by Byron Easley (Langston in Harlem). Amauta Marston-Firmino (managing editor at Theater Magazine) will serve as dramaturg, Gigi Buffington (Mary Page Marlowe) as dialect coach, and Jhanaë K-C Bonnick (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) as 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.
