Jeremy O. Harris Says Broadway Is in a ‘Crisis Moment,’ Pleads for Zohran Mamdani to Help

Jeremy O. Harris is demanding change in the theater industry. 

During the Tony Award-nominated playwright’s appearance on the Friday, October 2, episode of Vanity Fair’s Fair Game podcast, Harris discussed what he feels is problematic on Broadway and beyond. 

When asked what he is looking forward to in arts and entertainment this fall, the Slave Play writer said he is “not excited about anything” when it comes to theater. 

“We are in a crisis moment in the American Theater,” Harris declared. “I’m running the Williamstown Theatre Festival right now. It is having its hardest time raising money in the time when I know more rich people than I’ve ever known.” 

However, Harris said that people are unwilling to invest. 

“It’s not just Williamstown that’s having this problem,” Harris pointed out. “It is every major Off-Broadway theater, and you can tell from their programming. It is also the shows that are on Broadway, right?” 

Harris noted that people seem unwilling to back a project unless it has “the six biggest celebrities from the sixth biggest Netflix show that week,” fearing it “can’t run and recoup.” 

That kind of mentality, Harris said, “means that we are not getting the great performers of yesteryear that we discover from their Off-Broadway to Broadway transfer.” 

“It means that people that decided to do this — because it is a middle-class profession — are not able to feed their kids, are not able to feed their families, and are having to figure out what to do in this really, really expensive city,” he said. 

Harris then called on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to help the New York theater industry in a time when shows are struggling to survive. 

“This is my plea on this podcast,” Harris began. “Mamdani, you are calling everyone. Like anyone who talks about a pothole or the subway being too hot, you are answering their call. I’m doing this on Vanity Fair. Call me. Your people know me. Let’s talk about how to make theater more accessible in the city, how to bring the rents down on theater, how we do a theater-rent freeze somehow. Because I think that there is something really frightening about the greatest city in the world not having the greatest culture in the world.” 

When asked if artificial intelligence giants like Anthropic or OpenAI offered to fund next year’s Williamstown Theatre Festival, Harris said, “Listen, I would take the check.” 

“I think that we need to take the checks,” he insisted. “The only way to fight off the sort of deadening of the American imagination is to have the finances to invigorate a new generation of people to do it. Those things need to be funded, and the people who fund those things historically are all dying, and their kids are not doing it because their kids are like, ‘Well, what’s the ROI [return on investment] on this?’”

Harris is not the only person speaking out. 

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, Andrew Lloyd Webber addressed the closing of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, pleading for “theatre owners, unions and producers to come together urgently to address what is a crisis coming to a head.” 

Photo Credit: Bruce Glikas