“Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.” Review

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Several questions arise about the provocative and award-winning Slave Play. They’re questions that usually don’t have easy answers. Or, rather, answers that never want to be easy. The documentary on the play’s production is of a similar quality. An actor is asked what they think this documentary is about. One of them responds “I don’t think even you know what it’s about.”

The play itself is easy to describe on a mechanical level. It’s a three-act trilogy of stories about interracial relationships plumped with intense displays of sex and power dynamics amid its racially charged threads. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris walks his actors through the process of what he wants to convey. He is playful in exploring how society perceives and reacts to racism, sex, and hatred. It’s a compelling production of how the actors struggle with some more complicated components. The raw test footage reveals how tough this topic can be and how enlightening it is to explore.

When the play was performed, it brought out the provocations one might expect. As the film opens, a finished performance ends with a white woman angrily questioning why a play like this should make her feel guilty for being white. A common complaint usually arises whenever self-entitled white people grow uncomfortable with this type of daring art. It’s something that Harris seems to live for, as he caps this complaint by telling the audience he thinks he has his idea for a sequel right there. Polarization coats this play like a technicolor blanket, where audiences either loved it with a passion or hated it with similar vigor. It’s hard not to have some engaged reaction to a play with inelegant sex in the antebellum South.

This documentary is fascinating because it never crafts a simplistic behind-the-scenes picture or a societal snapshot. Jeremy O. Harris seems more interested in the bigger picture, focusing just as much on what his documentary says as he does with his stage production. His film cuts between the rehearsals, the interviews, the script, and the finished product before an audience. The pastiche of all this paints the picture of Harris being bound by more than creating an easy-to-digest tale of racial differences. That much becomes evident with the room he leaves in the script for actors trying to go the extra mile or do what feels right.

Harris’s spirit of endless tinkering is evident in this documentary, where he refuses to pin his work down so easily. One of the most trippy scenes comes near the end as he discusses the intentions of the documentary with his editor. His discussion is edited and placed on the screen in front of his editor to discuss how much needs to be included. This infinity window effect of debating the film while working on it creates this intoxicating level of awareness and questioning, making it a much more visceral movie. Harris tells his editor during this overlapping moment, “I think we broke the movie.”

There’s more than slavery and plays at play in Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. It probes into something more profound worth digging for beyond what we’ve learned about race relations, beyond what the play has provided. Through it all, Harris approaches this material with curiosity and a smile. If he’s uncertain where this is going, he is still excited to see where it goes next. That desire to tap into something lurking beneath is as intoxicating as the actors throwing themselves into demanding roles of approaching relationships, racism, sex, and power in a way that is earnestly messy with gut-punches aplenty.