Just kidding. It’s a “Black Only” night.

Chaos has engulfed a controversial West End play which is selling tickets for ‘black-only’ nights after one of the two dates vanished from its website.

 

Slave Play which is being held at the Noel Coward Theatre later this year has come under fire after announcing it will have two performances aimed at an ‘all-black-identifying audience’ that is ‘free from the white gaze’.

 

Producers, who say they want to ‘increase accessibility to theatre’, had said it would hold these performances on July 17 and September 17, with tickets being sold for as much £125.

 

However, the latter of these has vanished from the show’s website, with potential buyers given no option to buy tickets for a show on September 17, and no performance being listed for this date.

 

The people behind the show have said they are now ‘carefully considering’ how to incorporate the ‘black out’ nights as part of its run and insisted  ‘no-one will be prevented or precluded from attending any performance’.

 

[…]

 

‘The idea of a Black Out night is to say this is a night that we are specifically inviting black people to fill up the space, to feel safe with a lot of other black people in a place where they often do not feel safe.’

Incidentally, I’ve gone to shows in London’s West End and New York’s Broadway in the past eight months and both audiences had a lot of black folks in them. They had a lot of black folks and white folks all enjoying a show together. I challenge their premise.