Is Jeremy O. Harris’s Play for ‘Gossip Girl’ Real? Now It Is.

Tamora gives birth to a child, fathered by Aaron, who then kills the nurse to keep the child’s race a secret and flees with the baby to save it from the emperor. But Lucius, Titus’s son, captures Aaron and threatens to kill the child. To save his son, Aaron confesses to a plot for revenge. Lucius, who is later proclaimed emperor, orders Aaron be buried up to his chest and left to die. The baby, however, survives.

Harris’s play, then, picks up where Shakespeare left off. We meet Aaron (portrayed by Paul James in the “Gossip Girl” episode), named after his father, in his 20s. He has been raised, ironically, by Lucius Andronicus, now in his 60s. And he’s thirsty for revenge.

“The thing that I think makes Aaron a complex character in literature is because he’s like, ‘I’m evil because I’m Black,’” Harris said of Shakespeare’s play. “And this time, he’s like, ‘No, I’m evil because you guys have socialized me. You have socialized rules around what Black means and what maleness means.’”

When the opportunity to shoot at the Public arose, Harris knew two things: He wanted to do “Aaron.” And he wanted the director to be Machel Ross, who also directed his play “Black Exhibition” at Bushwick Starr in 2019. Lila Feinberg wrote and Jennifer Lynch directed the “Gossip Girl” episode, in which several characters grapple with what to make of the challenging work.

“I loved it. But it’d be committing theatrical seppuku to transfer it,” a theater critic mutters to another at the show’s after party.

The other responds: “It would close in a week, especially without a star. I just wish it wasn’t so confrontational.”

In an interview, Ross said she “knew that the text was evoking a very specific sort of confrontation between audience and performer.”