A London theater is going to ban white people from attending on two separate nights this summer for a play called “Slave Play,” which stars Kit Harington (Jon Snow).

The theater owner wants to have two nights where he has an all-black-identifying audience to protect them from “the white gaze” or something.

Here’s more from the Daily Mail:

A ‘controversial’ theatre production about race, identity and sexuality in twenty-first century America will put on two nights for black audiences to watch the play ‘free from the white gaze’.

Slave Play, starring Kit Harington who is best known for his role as Jon Snow in the HBO series Game of Thrones, is coming to the Noël Coward theatre in London’s West End from 29 June to 21 September.

But on the evenings of 17 July and 17 September, the theatre will be open to an ‘all-Black identifying audience’.

One senior Tory MP, who did not want to be named, raised questions over the decision to bar white people from the show, telling MailOnline: ‘I understand the subject matter of the show may have particular resonance for some but would simply question the legality of this?

‘In other circles it would be illegal and racial discrimination. I don’t understand why this isn’t.’

But playwright Jeremy O Harris told BBC Sounds he was ‘so excited’ to put on nights in the West End where tickets were only sold to people who identified as black. He said ‘it is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say ‘you’re invited’. Specifically you.’

According to the Guardian, some argued the play – surrounding three interracial couples attempting to reinvigorate their relationships while role-playing being on a plantation – made light of chattel slavery and left at least one audience member ‘offended and traumatised’.

Despite the criticism, Slave Play received 12 Tony nominations in 2021.

Playwright O Harris told BBC Sounds yesterday he was ‘so excited’ to put on nights in the West End where tickets were only sold to people who identified as black.

‘One of the things we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there and in most places in the west, poor people and black people have been told that they do not belong inside the theatre.

‘For me, as someone who wants and yearns for black and brown people to be in the theatre, who comes from a working class environment, who wants people who do not make six figures to feel like theatre is a place for them, it is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say ‘you’re invited’. Specifically you.’

Asked if it didn’t make him uncomfortable that in turn it was telling white people they weren’t allowed in the space, he responded: ‘There are a litany of places in our country that are generally only inhabited by white people, and nobody is questioning that, and nobody is saying that by inviting black audiences here you are uninvited.

This is nothing more than racism and I don’t know how Kit Harington can be okay with this. If he was part of a production in a theater that had nights where only white people were invited and that black people would be turned away, you can be sure that he’d be up in arms over it and would refuse to perform.

But in our new racially enlightened culture, punishing white people for being white isn’t racist at all apparently.