Harris has forged an unlikely career with sharp institutional critiques. Now he’s almost an institution unto himself.
“I one hundred per cent know that I have a Valley Girl accent because of ‘Clueless,’ ” Harris said. “But also, partially, I think unconsciously, I did it so that my intellect wouldn’t be intimidating to everyone around me. This is a part of my plays that was also a part of growing up—I’ve always had to figure out how to translate stuff from the academy into language that my mom could understand, without asking her to take time from her life to read, like,.
Harris spent much of his childhood in private Christian schools, helped by financial aid. As a result, he became comfortable with the discombobulating tension of being a poor Black kid in a largely rich, white environment. Then, in tenth grade, he got a scholarship to Carlisle, a prep school in Martinsville. In the hallways, there were pictures of each graduating class.
It was June—a beautiful month in Chicago but, for Harris, who had just turned nineteen, the grim beginning of an uncertain period. He called one of his teachers to ask why he’d been dismissed; she said that he wouldn’t be “castable” as an actor until his thirties, and rattled off a list of reasons that felt, to him, like “gay-coded shit.” He told me, “There were four Black boys in our year, and the two that got cut were the ones that felt the femme-est.
“Slave Play” was a genuinely difficult piece of work, a deliberate provocation. At one post-show Q. & A., a white woman yelled at Harris that she didn’t “want to hear that white people are the fucking problem all the time.” Some Black audience members insisted that the play was oriented toward a “white gaze,” and was a cynical exploitation of the intertwined subjects of slavery and rape. Both currents of backlash were more or less predictable.
“I am the No. 1 person who will tell you that I hate gay bars, because I don’t have as much power there,” he told me. “Black and skinny and charismatic—it gives you much more power in a straight bar than in a gay bar. I wasn’t threatening to the straight men there. And I was also a weird honeypot for the night clubs because all these fun girls would want to stick around longer to hang out, and buy more bottles, too.
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