A theater in London, England is bringing back racial segregation for two upcoming shows and will strictly limit ticket sales to audience members depending on the color of their skin.
The organizers of the racist event boasted that their “all-black identifying audience” will be “free from white gaze” while watching the play.
The playwright has claimed it is necessary to divide people based on race because, he claims, black people supposedly don’t feel comfortable around white people “in a theater setting.”
The announcement has provoked a widespread backlash, however.
“In other circles, it would be illegal and racial discrimination,” a senior Conservative Party Member of Parliament reportedly told the Daily Mail.
“I don’t understand why this isn’t.”
The “woke” playwright, Jeremy O. Harris, told BBC Sounds that he was “so excited” to limit ticket sales only to people who “identify” as black.
White people will be blocked from purchasing tickets for the shows on July 17 and September 17, according to the report.
“[I]t is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say ‘you’re invited. Specifically you,'” Harris said.
There is no indication that audience members will be “invited” to the shows, however, as they would need to purchase tickets via the normal process.
This isn’t the first time this has occurred.
Harris started the “BLACK OUT” initiative after he wrote “Slave Play.”
According to a website about the “BLACK OUT” initiative, it “is the purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, athletic, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze.”
“A concept birthed by Slave Play playwright Jeremy O. Harris, the inaugural BLACK OUT night took place on September 18, 2019.
“For the first time in history, all 804 seats of Broadway’s Golden Theatre were occupied by black-identifying audience members in communion, celebration, and recognition of Broadway’s rich, diverse, and fraught history of black work.”
“One of the things we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there and in most places in the West, poor people and black people have been told that they do not belong inside the theater,” Harris claimed.
The show in London stars Kit Harington, known for portraying Jon Snow on the HBO series “Game of Thrones.”
The playwright, who said he was raised in a “working-class environment,” argues that racial segregation is an important step to take.
“There are a litany of places in our country that are generally only inhabited by white people, and nobody is questioning that, and nobody is saying that by inviting black audiences here you are uninvited,” Harris said when asked if he felt at all uncomfortable about other racial groups not being allowed on those nights.
“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,” Harris said.
He also explained that there was a clear difference between “culturally white audiences and black audiences” in how they respond to plays.
“Let’s not act that we do not know that culturally white audiences and black audiences respond to things differently,” he said.
READ MORE – Seattle Public Schools Teach Students: Enjoying Reading & Writing Is ‘White Supremacy’
