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Speaker 1: What about to The Daily Show.
Speaker 3: My guess tonight is the playwright they critically acclaimed Slave
Speaker 3: Play in making his directorial debut with the new HBO
Speaker 3: documentary Slave Play. Not a movie, a play. Please welcome
Speaker 3: jereme O Harris.
Speaker 4: Welcome.
Speaker 1: The first off.
Speaker 3: Congratulations on your directorial debut.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I saw it last nights. It's fantastic for now. It's
Speaker 5: a movie based on a play, Slave Play for folks
Speaker 5: who didn't know slave Play twelve tony nominations, utshell? What
Speaker 5: a slave Play for people who didn't weren't cool enough
Speaker 5: like myself to go see it?
Speaker 4: You know, I say this in the dock, and I'm
Speaker 4: going to keep saying it till dad die. I don't
Speaker 4: tell people what slave Place is about it, No, I
Speaker 4: mean it's it's you know, listen, it's more fun if
Speaker 4: you don't know.
Speaker 1: If you go in a little confused, but you can
Speaker 1: also just go to Wikipedia. You on Twitter, just post
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia article.
Speaker 5: I was in New York when Slave Play came out,
Speaker 5: which was just before the pandemic. Yeah, when it when
Speaker 5: it moved to Broadway, and it was it was it
Speaker 5: was all the talk. Nobody would tell you what it
Speaker 5: was about. But people were angry. People like it was great,
Speaker 5: but it was something that I think you found unity
Speaker 5: and that you pissed off people of all races.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, I'm a Gemini, so I'm an equal opportunity offender.
Speaker 4: People are like that guy all the time. Can you
Speaker 4: say that here? I don't know, you can say whatever
Speaker 4: the hell you want.
Speaker 1: Great, right, So you do slave play? Right?
Speaker 5: But then you make a documentary about slave play? Why
Speaker 5: make a documentary? And when night write a book? Were
Speaker 5: you afraid Florida would ban it?
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: I mean actually I was afraid of my home state,
Speaker 4: Virginia would band it. I mean, like, who knows most
Speaker 4: of the places I've been are banning the books. But no,
Speaker 4: I didn't want to make a documentary to begin once.
Speaker 4: I didn't know. I literally the title of the movie
Speaker 4: comes from an email I sent to a very big
Speaker 4: movie studio. I'm not gonna say which one you can guess.
Speaker 4: You can guess, and I guess try Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm just kidding. They know, but they they're like,
Speaker 1: we want to make slave Play into a movie.
Speaker 4: And another one was like, we want to make slave
Speaker 4: Plan into a TV show. And I said, slave Play
Speaker 4: is not a movie, period, it is a play, period.
Speaker 1: And sent it.
Speaker 4: And then when HBO, so here's the nitty gritty. In
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, our play left the Golden Theater because it
Speaker 4: was gonna close early. I mean because another show was
Speaker 4: coming in. Mar McDonald show was coming in the Hangman. Sorry,
Speaker 4: this is long, it's so stupid.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the Hangar's coming in. We couldn't go. We couldn't
Speaker 1: be in that theater anymore.
Speaker 4: And then someone was like, hey, another played is on
Speaker 4: Brabe right now, is going to close early, so you
Speaker 4: can take that theater. We're like what, and they're like, yes,
Speaker 4: you can sign the papers March fourteenth, twenty twenty. We're
Speaker 4: like yes, and they were like and they were like,
Speaker 4: all you need to do it is an extra I
Speaker 4: don't know. I'm gonna say a number, but it's probably
Speaker 4: not real. Fifty thousand, and I was like, great, I
Speaker 4: just signed a deal with HBO. HBO does documentaries. My
Speaker 4: friend filmed the last day. My friend was a very
Speaker 4: famous documentarian. He had filmed our last performance. I was like,
Speaker 4: what if the documentary is like they're closing. No, no, oh,
Speaker 4: it's so sad.
Speaker 1: Then bam it's open to get on Broadway. You never
Speaker 1: expected that for a black play.
Speaker 4: So so I was, I was gonna do this little
Speaker 4: hat trick documentary.
Speaker 1: And I signed the papers and they gave us some money.
Speaker 4: And then March routeenth happened and I was stuck in
Speaker 4: a home in I was stuck at a place in
Speaker 4: Finsbury Park in London. I was, I had COVID in London.
Speaker 1: That's lovely. It was a very British review, guys. I
Speaker 1: only did it because I didn't want to. I wanted
Speaker 1: to get in an alien environment. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be like I didn't want to see like.
Speaker 4: You know, Canal Street empty, like that would be that
Speaker 4: would actually mean I was in a horror movie. If
Speaker 4: you don't see those little weird, little upside down buses
Speaker 4: like on the street, you don't know that it should
Speaker 4: be there.
Speaker 5: You know, Wait, do you think double decker buses are
Speaker 5: upside down.
Speaker 1: You look a little upside down.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's like if someone made a double
Speaker 4: decker bus a cake, they would call it like some
Speaker 4: sort of version of an upside down or like inside out, like.
Speaker 1: A topsy turvy gig are full of shit.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So then twenty twenty one comes around, HBO calls
Speaker 4: and they're like, hey, we wrote a check for your
Speaker 4: for you to write this documentary. You cash the money
Speaker 4: during twenty twenty, where's the doc? And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: got it. I'm supposed to make a dock And so
Speaker 4: then the next the last three years, I've been learning
Speaker 4: how to make a movie by making this doc. And
Speaker 4: the doc is just it is just theater supremacy. Like
Speaker 4: I say, it's not a movie, it's a play. And
Speaker 4: the whole spoiler alert from my movie, guys, the end
Speaker 4: of the movie basically articulates why plays are better than movies.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know.
Speaker 4: Listen, And as I say there, one art form is
Speaker 4: new and one art form is old. We've only been
Speaker 4: making movies since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: They're already trying to take that away from us. They're
Speaker 1: not trying to get.
Speaker 4: Computers to make them now, So I'm like, they're not
Speaker 4: gonna get computers to make plays. People barely see them,
Speaker 4: no one wants to pay for them. So cheap making
Speaker 4: play and changing lives of people are everywhere. And speaking
Speaker 4: of which, this is a lot, but I I'm producing
Speaker 4: a play right now.
Speaker 1: It's called Invasive Species. It's at the Vineyard Theater. And
Speaker 1: I want to give you this hat merch merch.
Speaker 5: Go to a play and your mind change and.
Speaker 1: Leave with some fricking merch. Invasive Species. Yeah, I love it?
Speaker 5: Now you do you do articulate in the movie Why
Speaker 5: You Love Theater? Right? And I will say we talked
Speaker 5: a little bit backstage, and it is true. I went
Speaker 5: to go see Slave Play with my wife and a
Speaker 5: friend and we left slave Play and we were like,
Speaker 5: we need to go talk about this.
Speaker 1: And you don't get.
Speaker 5: That with a lot of a lot of a lot
Speaker 5: of experiences anymore, right, we really make space to actually
Speaker 5: try to parse something and try to find where the
Speaker 5: meaning is what it meant to us. And I think
Speaker 5: Slave Play was one that pushed a lot of buttons
Speaker 5: but started a lot of conversations like yes, you're a
Speaker 5: theater supremacist.
Speaker 1: But you are the only supremacists you can be. That's yeah, it's.
Speaker 5: A good one, right, Yeah, if you're gonna pick one.
Speaker 5: But how do you still use the I use the
Speaker 5: medium of film to start those convers Well.
Speaker 4: I mean I think that like one of the things
Speaker 4: that I grew up on was like this sort of
Speaker 4: theatrical effemora that like sort of created a generation of
Speaker 4: people who like theater. I mean, the people who are
Speaker 4: watching the plays on Brober right now are all a
Speaker 4: golden generation of people who are the same age as
Speaker 4: every congressman and senator, meaning that sure they're not long
Speaker 4: for this earth, yes, and they're amazing. But when they
Speaker 4: were seeing when they were seeing plays, they were also
Speaker 4: going home and watching television shows or hearing radio plays
Speaker 4: on the thing, and theater was everywhere around them.
Speaker 1: We had, you know, we had a taste of it
Speaker 1: was like inside the actress.
Speaker 4: Studio or like those amazing like Uda Hog and videos
Speaker 4: of her like talking to weird actors and smoking in
Speaker 4: the room, and like there were like you know, company
Speaker 4: the Pennybacker doc where you saw like you know, all
Speaker 4: of these amazing, you know, phenomenal actors struggling and failing
Speaker 4: in front of you to make the company soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Company was a failure on Broadway.
Speaker 4: But they made a documentary about it when it came
Speaker 4: out because people cared about the Effemora Theater. What happened
Speaker 4: when live people got together and did a thing right?
Speaker 4: And now the only time we do that. We care
Speaker 4: about you guys. You guys are great comedy. We let
Speaker 4: comedy do it.
Speaker 1: But like, thank you a pretty scanda.
Speaker 4: But I think that like, as a culture, we should
Speaker 4: care about the life theatrical experience outside of just sn L,
Speaker 4: the Daily Show, you know, mad TV when it was here.
Speaker 4: You know, we should care about We should care about
Speaker 4: the people in Oklahoma who like, are gathering around to
Speaker 4: tell the story of Black Wall Street in a play
Speaker 4: in the middle of Tulsa.
Speaker 1: Because that play, it.
Speaker 4: Might seem small, it's not as big as a movie.
Speaker 4: It won't be seen by two hundred million people. But
Speaker 4: the two hundred people a night that see that play
Speaker 4: will leave talking about it, even if they're talk about
Speaker 4: how much they hate it And.
Speaker 1: What do you think that is?
Speaker 5: Though, Like, I mean, I totally agree with you, but
Speaker 5: do you think that is because it is a communal
Speaker 5: experience because we're all in a space together, which we
Speaker 5: also get in movie theaters. And people still talk about
Speaker 5: how horror films do so well because you have this
Speaker 5: shared fear in a space, and comedy films do well
Speaker 5: in that sense. Or is it the fact that film
Speaker 5: has gotten so good at replicating reality or taking us
Speaker 5: to feats of fantasy and that theaters still live space
Speaker 5: for for imagination that we can't fill in the gaps
Speaker 5: like where do you see the special sauce in that?
Speaker 4: I think that, Like, so, there are definitely filmmakers and
Speaker 4: films that like don't ask you to have a passive imagination.
Speaker 1: A lot of films do, though.
Speaker 4: I think a film that required you to like lean
Speaker 4: in past your your passivity was like Zone Adventures from
Speaker 4: last year, right, a movie that like like you're you're
Speaker 4: in that movie and he's holding onto you tight, and
Speaker 4: he's like you can you better watch and make sense
Speaker 4: of all this and fill in the blanks yourself, right,
Speaker 4: because there's a lot on the corners you have to
Speaker 4: fill in. Most movies don't give you that space. They
Speaker 4: don't trust their audience enough. Players have to by the
Speaker 4: very nature of being going to play. If I'm going
Speaker 4: to play and I tell you that I'm going to Mars,
Speaker 4: You'll believe it, whether there's special effects doing it or not,
Speaker 4: because I've just told you I'm going to Mars and
Speaker 4: you have to buy it, because I think the contract
Speaker 4: you signed to going to the theater.
Speaker 1: Again, that's why a lot of people don't like it.
Speaker 4: It can be bad like see like I'm going to Mars.
Speaker 1: You're like no, I mean there is something to that.
Speaker 5: That moment is an invit to the audience and we
Speaker 5: all have to agree on the inherent silliness of believing something.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, and but that conversation, that belief inside of
Speaker 4: a micro community right, It is so necessary for the
Speaker 4: for political change in my opinion, because I think that
Speaker 4: when you when you when you worked really hard to
Speaker 4: see the same thing with a bunch of people around you,
Speaker 4: when you leave, you want to engage with them to
Speaker 4: talk about how the ideas inside of the thing you
Speaker 4: just you just saw or whatever can be tangibly made
Speaker 4: manifest in reality and not just in this fantasy you've engaged.
Speaker 1: Do you see it? And that's interesting?
Speaker 5: You see that you see that as possible in film
Speaker 5: or wider, wider art forms that can reach more people,
Speaker 5: And is the is somebody dropping the ball on that,
Speaker 5: like doing are we not engaging the ability to use
Speaker 5: some of these other art forms to have these conversations
Speaker 5: to an act more?
Speaker 1: I think are people are doing it all over?
Speaker 4: I mean, like there's amazing painters, amazing performance artists, amazing
Speaker 4: musicians who are gotting, Like you know, Mustafa the poet
Speaker 4: just made this amazing song that just came out the
Speaker 4: other day that I think it's galvant is an entire
Speaker 4: entire community of people around like thinking about Goza in
Speaker 4: a different way on a musical level, right. I think
Speaker 4: that like one of the things that one of the
Speaker 4: things I don't want us to lose though, is like
Speaker 4: in our in our in the ease of Netflix and
Speaker 4: and Max and whatever channel you're watching this on, I
Speaker 4: don't know, you might be streaming.
Speaker 1: It or stealing it, streaming stealing.
Speaker 5: Whatever we're watching it liter COmON Central, thank you very.
Speaker 4: Much, But no matter how, no matter how you might
Speaker 4: have gotten this, I don't I don't want the other
Speaker 4: tools in our toolboxes as a society to get lost
Speaker 4: along the way because this is easier, right, like going
Speaker 4: to a theater is hard. Getting forty people together to
Speaker 4: make a thing happen every night for for weeks is difficult,
Speaker 4: you know, and and and and yet it's a necessity
Speaker 4: because I think it it helps us see, and it
Speaker 4: helps us scene imagine in a different way, and the
Speaker 4: same way that a painting comes you see imagine a
Speaker 4: different way than a novel, the same way that like
Speaker 4: a novel helps you see and imagine a different way
Speaker 4: than a poem. And what a poem can do in
Speaker 4: forty words is like so delicious. You don't want that
Speaker 4: to fall away just because like I don't know.
Speaker 1: We can tweet now, right, I mean, which is still
Speaker 1: pretty fun. It's so fun.
Speaker 5: Slave Play is about to open in London, yes, right,
Speaker 5: And there's been a little drama in London.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh god. I try not to talk about this.
Speaker 3: Well you're on TV now, man, buckle up.
Speaker 1: I did. I did give you the hat, so I
Speaker 1: think you give me that, so you gotta give me
Speaker 1: the drama. Drama.
Speaker 5: Look, you do something to call blackout dates, right, and
Speaker 5: I'll let you what is it? What is a blackout date?
Speaker 4: So okay, I've done Okay, London, Hi, I'm so so
Speaker 4: so so sorry you think.
Speaker 1: We have that reach.
Speaker 5: I think we really are speaking in London.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Listen, this is television, it's not a theater.
Speaker 1: It can go everywhere there go speak to speak to
Speaker 1: love London.
Speaker 4: I am so so sorry that my BBC interview about
Speaker 4: a thing I had done in than a year prior
Speaker 4: calls so much ire this time. I don't know why
Speaker 4: I didn't do it to cause any ire, But I
Speaker 4: do think that, both in America and in the UK,
Speaker 4: thinking about the architecture of who's in your audience matters.
Speaker 1: Right, Having an audience of.
Speaker 4: People like this is what comedians do every time they
Speaker 4: have someone come on and warm up the audience, and
Speaker 4: they warm them up specifically, right, Like, if you're gonna
Speaker 4: do like an audience of like college bros, you better
Speaker 4: arm whoever's going out there to know what.
Speaker 1: Kind of humor gets them going. Right.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that we have to think about the
Speaker 4: architecture of the audiences that we've invited into a play.
Speaker 4: My play London is a really intense play about race, trauma, colonization,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 1: And because of that.
Speaker 4: When you are a black person or a brown person
Speaker 4: in that audience. It can feel complex to sit next
Speaker 4: to a white person. Now that complexity was a part
Speaker 4: of the play. I wanted that. I love a mixed audience.
Speaker 4: That's how I grew up, that's how the plays. The
Speaker 4: play is a mixed play. Yet had an audience member
Speaker 4: asked me, what would this feel like to see the
Speaker 4: show with only black people? Can you give me that?
Speaker 4: And I said, why not. It'll only be one or
Speaker 4: two nights. So we did two nights where it was
Speaker 4: where I only invited black people. Now you could come
Speaker 4: if you wanted to. Tanya Pinkins brought a white friend.
Speaker 4: She was like, I wanted to know what it's like
Speaker 4: when I go see a.
Speaker 1: Check off play.
Speaker 4: And I was like, that's great, But it was mainly
Speaker 4: black people.
Speaker 1: It's Kiki Palmer was there.
Speaker 4: It was like, you know, the kid from NYU that
Speaker 4: DM me the night before, being like me and all
Speaker 4: the Black student Union want to come. And it was
Speaker 4: the first time that I saw my play and everyone everyone.
Speaker 1: In the audience laughed when I laughed when I was writing.
Speaker 4: It, which was crazy because when you see my play,
Speaker 4: and I think there's a lot a lot of times
Speaker 4: that white people are nervous about when they're laughing, and
Speaker 4: when black people are nervous when they're laughing, and no
Speaker 4: one wants to give the other people permissioned to laugh
Speaker 4: because like you see someone laughing, like what you're laughing at?
Speaker 4: And then you laugh and they're like, well, why are
Speaker 4: they laughing? And it's like becomes this whole thing. You
Speaker 4: see the races. That was a little the race voice
Speaker 4: play I did there, but.
Speaker 1: Crazy.
Speaker 2: Thanks guys, you're also seen.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think what you're when you're speaking to
Speaker 5: is something that there is a play that's happening on
Speaker 5: stage right. But what is also compelling in this experience
Speaker 5: is the tension that we're experiencing in the theater and
Speaker 5: if we're given this space to articulate that and think
Speaker 5: through what we are feeling based on what we're seeing
Speaker 5: other people react to that and of itself is a
Speaker 5: separate performance and you're trying to curate that in a
Speaker 5: different lens.
Speaker 1: That's how I came up with the why did you
Speaker 1: tell London? Because I didn't. You did it. You did
Speaker 1: it so well, you know.
Speaker 4: But at Yale when I did this way Yale, which
Speaker 4: is like a part of the thing I don't I
Speaker 4: should put this in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I wanted the movie to be short.
Speaker 1: I don't think movie should be that long. So think
Speaker 1: about sequel. Yeah, it'll be in the extra bits on
Speaker 1: HBO Max.
Speaker 4: But but when we did it at Yale, it was
Speaker 4: the first time. I was the woke class at Yale,
Speaker 4: Like the class where they told us, this is the
Speaker 4: most diverse we've ever had a student body at.
Speaker 1: Yale for the first time ever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's the same number of men and women in
Speaker 4: the class of actors who.
Speaker 1: Are like what in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: Absolutely were they saying that while they were patting themselves
Speaker 5: on the back.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, and no shades are teachers. They were great,
Speaker 1: they were they were trying whatever.
Speaker 4: Anyway, we had a lot of people of color and
Speaker 4: women for the first time in our in our class. Again,
Speaker 4: for years, no acting conservatory in the country had as
Speaker 4: many women as men. You know, why not as many
Speaker 4: roles for women? What are gonna do with all those women?
Speaker 4: There's not no roles?
Speaker 1: Instead of just saying why don't we.
Speaker 4: Find plays where there or invite writers to write more
Speaker 4: roles for women by just having an influx of them.
Speaker 1: Yes, they just said we need less we have three sisters.
Speaker 4: We only have three sisters sisters, so anyway, it's Uncle Vin,
Speaker 4: it's not keep moving.
Speaker 1: But at Yale.
Speaker 4: One of the cool things and interesting things about going
Speaker 4: to yalees that you're in a community. You're in a
Speaker 4: full town called New Haven, where there are people who
Speaker 4: saw Lapita and Leander do her first play at Yale.
Speaker 4: So not only are you watching people like not only
Speaker 4: are people who are watching all the students play as
Speaker 4: the student body, it's also a bunch of like older
Speaker 4: mainly white people who have seen every play that's ever
Speaker 4: been at Yale watching the plays too. And my play
Speaker 4: was in a three quarter thrust and when slave Plays started,
Speaker 4: because it was so small, you could see everyone seeing everything.
Speaker 4: So imagine seeing like thirty young black brown kids right
Speaker 4: here and then right across the road road for them,
Speaker 4: also lit by the lights, like fifty older white people
Speaker 4: just like looking and like and the laughs are like
Speaker 4: ha ha, And then everyone gets really nervous and scared.
Speaker 4: And then people felt implicated because they're like, why are
Speaker 4: they looking at me so much? A're looking at me
Speaker 4: so much? It's like, no, they weren't even looking at you.
Speaker 4: They're looking at the play, but it looks like they're
Speaker 4: looking at you because they're looking right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so when we did the when we were doing playoffs,
Speaker 4: like the play has to happened in the round. It
Speaker 4: has to happen in the round. And New York City
Speaker 4: Workshop was like, we can't afford the round. But Clint
Speaker 4: Ramos and Robert O'Hara my director, and my director is
Speaker 4: Robert Clint is the set designer.
Speaker 1: We're like, we got this.
Speaker 5: Put those mirrors back there, mirrors behind it all, and
Speaker 5: the entire show.
Speaker 4: You get to watch people watch the play, and like
Speaker 4: that becomes the play for me in so many ways,
Speaker 4: like watching people squirm. It's fun for me, yes, and
Speaker 4: it's fun for other people. Yet like the first time
Speaker 4: you see you'll be squirming.
Speaker 1: You won't like it. It'll be like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how I to feeling about this. But then the.
Speaker 4: Second time you come, the third time you come, you
Speaker 4: get to watch everyone else you look I know the secret,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: And for a narcissist, it's great for me because I
Speaker 5: can just watch myself phone.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, look at you.
Speaker 4: You look so great, thank you, very blue eyes, beautiful, right,
Speaker 4: they are?
Speaker 1: They are you get lost? Guys.
Speaker 5: See, these are the types of conversations we should be having.
Speaker 5: The documentary Slave Play Not a movie, A play Well
Speaker 5: debut June twentieth, HBO and available to stream on Max.
Speaker 5: Also go see Invasive Species. This is Jereme o'harris.
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