At 11:00AM on Sunday, November 10th, acclaimed playwright Jeremy O. Harris alerted his Twitter followers that he had an extra ticket for the matinee performance of his Broadway show, Slave Play. “Will get one of u children in with me if you’re interested,” he wrote.
12 minutes later, an actress named Sis responded to Harris's open call. The 22-year-old had just gotten off a double shift at the Big Apple Circus, where she was working as a bartender. Soon enough, a DM appeared in her inbox, followed by a post to Jeremy’s twitter. “A winner” had been selected.
Not long after, the self-described “broadway whore” from Houston, Texas made her way to the Golden Theater, where she was met by the playwright, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“It was surreal,” she tells them. “I was already geeked cause I was seeing a Broadway show with the playwright. Who does that?”
What’s more, while her experience at the show is certainly unique, its spirit of inclusion reflects arguably the most radical dimension of Slave Play. More than any Broadway show in recent memory, Harris has designed his production to reach audiences who have been traditionally overlooked and left out of the typical Broadway viewership. From offering 10,000 tickets for only $39 (the average paid admission of a Broadway play in 2019 was nearly $120) to realizing the historic “Black Out” performance this September, in which all 804 available seats were set aside for Black theatergoers, to parlaying public appearances into opportunities to encourage rich talk show hosts to fund less privileged folks’ ability to see the show, Harris and his team have strived gallantly toward democratizing and diversifying the theater. The power of a story like Sis’, therefore, is not that it’s exceptional. It’s that, within Harris's inclusive vision, it makes sense.
Before we get into your experience at Slave Play, I’d love to hear a little about you. Who is Sis?
I am a performer, singer, actress, dancer, director, everything. I identify as transgender and nonbinary. I moved to New York officially in May. I’m trying to basically, you know, get my footing in the city, be a Broadway star like the bad bitch I am.
I’m a self-servicing human being. I’ve been on my own for a while now. I got kicked out of my house the day after graduating high school, and have had a very difficult life. It’s hard because I don’t want that to be erased from my journey, like on my way up, because that’s the whole reason I got here. It’s the whole reason why Sis is this human being who loves talking to people, loves support, loves manifesting dreams.
Speaking of manifesting dreams, can you walk me through how this Sunday afternoon all got started? I want to hear what went on and what you were thinking along the way.
So I had just gotten off of work at the Big Apple Circus. And I saw Jeremy post that, and I was like “Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, like me, girl. Me, girl. Me, girl. Girl, come on. Come on.” Then he went away for a little bit, so I sent him a DM, and I mentioned him. I texted all my group messages telling them to, “pray for Sis, because Jeremy finna change my life.” Then all of a sudden I get a DM from Jeremy asking if I’ve seen the show yet. I told him no. Be there at 3:00pm, he says. But your girl was a little hungry, so she got her chicken burrito and was on her way. I was there at 2:50pm ready to see my good sis Jeremy O. Harris.
And Jeremy wasn’t your only iconic companion, right? There was that special guest, too.
So all of a sudden I’m sitting down and all I see are these people walking up. I turn around and here he is standing right there. And he’s like “Can I sit next to you?” And I’m like “Do you want me to scoot over?”
In my mind I knew it was Harry Styles, but I couldn’t, you know? Sis had to be ready. I scooted over, honey, and we talked about the weather. We talked about where we were from. It was just a surreal moment and a surreal experience. I was seeing a broadway show with the playwright. Who does that? The playwright gave me a ticket. This doesn’t happen for everybody. I knew all the struggle and all the pain I’ve gone through is paying off right now, because I’ve put in the work.
Wow. So moving toward the show itself, I think one of the things that makes this production so important is how adamant Jeremy and everyone involved has been in terms of welcoming much more diverse audiences than one is likely to find at most Broadway shows. I was wondering how this atmosphere of inclusion influenced your experience?
I am an unapologetic Black person. Like, I am from the hood of Houston, Texas. You know, I’m just very cultured when it comes to my history. I’m a ghetto bitch; I’m ghetto fabulous. I’m loud, and when I’m emoting, that’s known. How I feel is known. Everything is known. I don’t hide that, so when I see shows I’m normally the loudest one in the audience — cackling, or just feeling some type of way.
And so at Slave Play I was thinking about Jeremy’s response to when all that Rihanna stuff happened —how she was texting in the audience. He was like, “Y’all don’t get to do this. Y'all don’t get to control peoples’ reactions, or how people are in the theater, because what that stems from is the institutionalized racist ideal of how people should operate in this professional world.” And that logic is also what Sis stands for, because there’s no space for me to take up, a transgender nonbinary, Black, bigger talented human being. There’s no place for me. And so that’s why this experience was different, because Jeremy was sitting next to me. He made that space so comfortable for me.
That’s amazing. And now I must know—what’d you think of the performance itself?
It was literally the best piece of theater I’ve seen in my whole life. I have never seen my emotions be so present on a Broadway stage, and represented so authentically. Note-by-note, line-by-line, it was so correct. Even the beginning — I was like you right — I know it sounds crazy, but I been wanting, (if the mood was right) my fine, tall, skinny white boy that looks like they got an autoimmune disorder to call me a negress, too. How can I react to this in a way that is correct when I know that it’s something, a sickness, a virus, that some of us feel? And the fact that I can see this — something so deeply rooted in my culture — on this Broadway stage...Finally: I was waiting to exhale the whole time. I had never been so involved in a piece of theater.
Sis will be performing at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in New York on 11/20 at 7:30 pm.
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