Jeremy O. Harris, author of 'Slave Play,' has taken Broadway by storm this season and hopes to leave it irrevocably changed.
Jeremy O. Harris was running late. Not late like a playwright who graduated only a few months ago from the Yale School of Drama but late like Rihanna, for whom, when she attended a performance of his “Slave Play,” the show that has been shaking up Broadway this fall, he made sure the curtain was held until the singer he calls a “patron saint” descended into her seat at the Golden Theatre.
An intellectual with a Kardashian‘s gift for self-marketing, Harris speaks in a patois that blends multicultural theory with F-bombs. One minute he’s holding forth on the intersectional feminism of Saidiya Hartman, the next he’s analyzing the semiotics of the outfit he wore to the Met Gala. A peek at photos from his Out magazine cover story comes accompanied with a black-studies-meets-queer-studies level of discourse. He’s an egghead but of the Fabergé variety.
His large-than-life virtual presence is matched in person by his 6-foot-5 frame and runway style. When he finally burst into the Soho restaurant 45 minutes late, he was a flurry of friendly apology. Sweeping off his coat to reveal a Gucci sweater emblazoned with the words “If They Did But Know,” his long braids swaying insouciantly, he ordered a dirty martini and when it arrived promptly sent it back for not being dirty enough.
As soon as Harris had taken a few sips of his extra dirty martini, he proposed that we go outside into the chill November night for a cigarette. Not a smoker, I nonetheless joined him, leaving my wine behind but snatching my digital recorder, which captured his exchange with a smooth-talking mendicant and his even longer back-and-forth with a woman who had heard him say “some very ethereal things” about “Slave Play” on the podcast “Keep It.
Broadway critics were largely enthusiastic, but one review that Harris found particularly vexing was written by the Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout, who began with the following observation: “When a new play by an unknown playwright is universally described as ‘controversial’ yet meets with near-universal critical acclaim … well, it’s not controversial.” Just recalling the line caused Harris to quake.
When talking one-on-one, Harris is tender and confiding. His reputation for being tempestuous isn’t unfounded, but it’s misleading. I worried that he might be combative, but he was warm, funny, sensitive and acutely self-observing in person. Before he graduated from Yale, there were alarmed reports coming out of New Haven about his thesis play, “Yell: a ‘documentary’ of my time here.” Anger, he freely admitted, fueled thisabout his Ivy League alienation.
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