Playwright Jeremy O Harris, however, said he was "so excited" by the thought of having black-exclusive audiences in an interview with BBC News.

He said that "one of the things that we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there."

"For me," he said, "as someone who wants and yearns for black and brown people to be in the theater, who comes from a working-class environment, who wants people who do not make six figures a year to feel like theater is a place for them, it is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say 'you’re invited specifically you, and if.'"

With blacks only in the audience, he said that the theater "100 percent" "feels different."

"Let's not act as though we do not know that culturally black audiences and white audiences respond to things differently," he concluded.

The Standard reports that invitation-only tickets for these "Black Out nights" will be sold and distributed through black community groups.