Taking the stage for a curtain call speech following the final Broadway performance of Slave Play, playwright Jeremy O. Harris spoke of one of his favorite traditions of 19th century drama, the encore...of a monologue.
"When people saw a monologue they loved a lot, the audience would say 'Do it again! Do it again! Encore' in the middle of the play. And in the middle of the play, they would just rewind and do it again," Harris explained.
"I want the actress who has done this monologue for five years to regale me with the virus monologue one more time on this stage," Harris said, urging actress Antoinette Crowe-Legacy to encore Kaneisha's Act II speech. Watch the request and the performance in the clip above.
Crowe-Legacy originated the role of Kaneisha in 2017 at Yale’s Langston Hughes Festival when she and Harris were both in graduate studies at Yale School for Drama. She made her Broadway debut in the play's return engagement, which began previews November 23, 2021 ahead of an official opening on December 2 at the August Wilson Theatre.
Robert O'Hara directed the work, a provocative study of sex, race, power, and history, in which three interracial couples work through their marital troubles in a Southern plantation setting.
The ensemble cast also included Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, and Annie McNamara—each Tony-nominated for their performances in the original Broadway run—along with Irene Sofia Lucio, Paul Alexander Nolan, Devin Kawaoka, and Jonathan Chad Higginbotham.
