The show featured a white actress portraying Harriet Tubman, the American abolitionist who was born into slavery.
The Montreal International Jazz Festival has canceled performances of « SLAV, a theatrical odyssey based on slave songs » featuring a predominantly white cast, and apologized « to those who were hurt, » the National Post of Canada reported.
The show featured a white actress portraying Harriet Tubman, the American abolitionist who was born into slavery. The musical also includes a scene of white actors picking cotton in slave costumes.
Protesters, who said the show amounted to white people appropriating a black cultural form, gathered outside the venue in Montreal last week when the show opened, the Post reported, and patrons had to pass through a police cordon to enter the theater.
The festival described the show on its website as « a highly visual music-theater show, a tribute to music as a tool for resilience and emancipation » and says cast members « offer a remarkable interpretation of the songs, laments and lullabies that united these human beings dispossessed of everything. »
The musical was selling out performances when the Jazz Festival decided to cancel it after the protests.
