Slave Play: Kit Harrington defends theatre’s ‘black out’ nights

The Broadway run also had black out nights, which organisers said were intended for an “all-black-identifying audience”.

“People have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there,” Harris told BBC Radio 4, external earlier this year.

The second of the two black out performances in London’s West End will take place in September.

Harrington said “the energy on stage and in the audience” during the first one “was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced”.

“And I do believe with this play and what it’s saying, that having a place where a certain group of people can come and feel open to laughing in a certain way, reacting in a certain way, in sort of safety, for two nights of the entire run, is a great thing.”

His co-star Olivia Washington said: “To see black and brown people in a 900-seat theatre, I’ve never experienced that, as an audience member I’d never experienced that.

“So it was very special for me to experience in doing this play, because as you [Kuenssberg] said, it is difficult, it’s difficult subject matter, it can get hard for people to hear.

“However, to feel supported by this room in a different kind of way felt just – it felt really great.”

Slave Play’s producers told BBC News in February that the “intent is to celebrate the play with the widest possible audience”, adding: “To be absolutely clear, no-one will be prevented or precluded from attending any performance of Slave Play.”