"BLACK OUT NIGHTS":

Started in 2019 by American playwright Jeremy O’Harris for his play Slave Play, Black Out Nights are specific performances held during a show’s run where only Black audience members are invited to attend. In Toronto, companies like Theatre Passe Muraille have adopted this idea, hosting their first Black Out Night in 2020 with Natasha Adiyana Morris’s show The Negroes Are Congregating, with plans to offer it for future shows by Black artists. As well as creating an opportunity for Black patrons to attend theatre by Black artists, scholar Signy Lynch suggests that these “Black Out” performances cast their audiences in a way that de-centres whiteness and confronts the white-dominated spaces in the theatre industry. For more, please see Lynch, Theatre Passe Muraille.