Inside James Cusati-Moyer’s playground
James Cusati-Moyer is entering the final week of his West End stint in Jeremy O Harris’s Slave Play. The show is unlike anything I’ve seen before — it’s a heavy, scandalous exploration of race and sexuality, flecked with unexpected humour throughout. Immediately I’m not surprised that its run on New York’s Broadway earned the work 12 Tony nominations. I’m equally unsurprised that, out of that dozen, it won zero. The hold that the white middle class has on theatre isn’t loosening enough. It’s not quite ready for something like Slave Play. But that isn’t to say that Harris is failing to shift the tides. “We were very nervous coming onto Broadway,” Cusati-Moyer says, casting his mind back to his debut as the production’s Dustin six years ago and the play’s transfer to Broadway in 2019. “No reviews had come out yet, and I was walking with a cast member to get coffee in the East Village. There was this long line that stretched all around the block. And we were like, oh, I wonder what that’s for. And it was for us.”
The thespian is clearly unbothered about the controversy that comes with acting in such a novel piece of theatre. “Since the time of the Greeks,” he says flippantly, “theatre has riled up the public community.” Flippant, however, Cusati-Moyer is not. I’m quick to learn that the actor — who attended the Yale School of Drama alongside Slave Play’s writer — is unfalteringly serious about his craft. Equally serious is he about the impact novel works such as this have on society — on allowing new, more diverse, perspectives to be seen both on and off the stage.
This excerpt was taken from HUNGER Issue 32: Family Affair. Stay tuned for the full story.
- PhotographerJordan Rossi
- Fashion and Beauty DirectorMarco Antonio
- WriterScarlett Coughlan
- Hair StylistBrixton Cowie using BUMBLE AND BUMBLE and HAIR BY SAM MCKNIGHT
- RetouchingAlice Constance
- ProducerAbby Rothwell
