Tony Award nominee appears in ‘Erupcja’ with pop-artist sensation Charli xcx at the Sie FilmCenter

Jeremy O. Harris came through Denver last Saturday like a volcano.

The extroverted actor and Tony Award-nominated playwright visited the Sie FilmCenter with his new movie “Erupcja” — the Polish word for “eruption” — and left no lava unspilled.

Most of it was fun, namely his wild stories of co-starring and cavorting around Warsaw with British singer Charli xcx, also a co-producer making her formal film-acting debut.

In the film, which was captured in a fully renegade filmmaking fashion, Charli xcx plays a woman, shall we say, navigating a complicated relationship — to the detriment of the poor sap who thinks he’s come to Poland to propose to her.

“She is a light and a wonder in this movie, and I’m so excited for you to see it,” Harris told the Denver audience.

Charlie xcx was filming “Erupcja” while also finishing a remix of 2024’s “Brat,” the album that propelled her to defining mainstream pop stardom — and earned her seven Grammy Award nominations. This was all just before the A24 film studio green-lit “The Moment,” a just-released mockumentary satire that presents Charli xcx as a fictionalized version of herself had she made very different career choices.

“Her biggest thing was that she wanted to play someone who wasn’t like her,” Harris said of “Erupcja.” “I think she had a notion that she was about to do something like ‘The Moment,’ and this became the training ground for her to utilize a lot of the things she’d been working on in her acting classes.

“She had all the same anxieties that any young actor would have while trying to figure things out. But what I think was really cool is that she has a sort of brazen relationship to her vulnerability, where she doesn’t hide when she’s afraid or nervous. She will dive right into the deep end without qualm.”

On top of all that was the “Brat” remixing. 

“She was filming our movie during the day and then she’d go back to Nobu (Hotel) Warsaw at night, sending new tracks to Troye Savon, getting new vocals from Caroline Polocheck, and then coming to set the next day, writing with us, doing the scenes, and then going and doing the same thing over and over again. It was insane,” Harris said.

Which is not to say they did not get out.

“Poland is a really wild place,” said Harris,” who told of the night he asked a local photographer to direct them to a rave.

The party headed out at 2 a.m. and into the forest 30 minutes outside Warsaw, where they heard loud, thumping music, turned a corner, “and all we see are these huge vending machines, a sound setup and two people just sitting in folding chairs saying, like, ‘Hello?’ And we were like, ‘What the (bleep)?’” Harris said.

“To this day, me and Charli still wonder if he texted a bunch of people to put a rave up in the forest because Charlie xcx was in town, but not enough people got the information, because we felt punked. It was so insane,” he added.

“Erupcja” is directed by Pete Ohs, a filmmaking rebel who studied computer science and falls on the autism spectrum. “Pete has a thing where he’ll take a camera, find a location, write half an outline, and then go with a bunch of friends and make a story together,” Harris said. “He calls it ‘The Table of Bubbles.’ He said you don’t put anything on top of that table of bubbles that it can’t hold. You can’t put your hopes on it because it’ll fall through. You can’t put your dreams on it. All you can do with a table of bubbles is look at it and admire it for the great experience you have of being in its presence. So, he doesn’t put any pressure on the films that he makes.”

Harris upended American theater convention when his controversial “Slave Play” debuted on Broadway in 2019 (and returned in 2021). It was nominated for a record 12 Tony Awards, and yet won none. His deliberately provocative and polarizing story follows three interracial couples who are put through a fictional slavery-based therapy technique that exposes deep-seated power dynamics and racial conflicts within them.

The play prompted occasional audience outbursts and disruptions in New York. Just check YouTube.

It’s not altogether surprising that most mainstream theater companies won’t touch “Slave Play” with a 10-foot lightning rod, but this might be the most-celebrated and least-produced play to come out of Broadway — maybe ever.

Harris gets it. It’s upsetting.  “A lot of people are really afraid of doing anything that might be deemed controversial,” he said.

It’s available for local companies around the country to produce, but few have taken what would certainly be a creative and financial risk.

But isn’t that the reason we make theater?

I asked Harris what I might tell Denver theater companies that are hesitant about adding it to their season. He asked me to name one of the leading companies in the metro. I blurted: “Curious.”

“OK, then: You’ve got to tell the Curious to come curious about this play.

“But, if not, I have a new play coming next season, so maybe they’ll want to do that one.”

Before Harris left the Sie FilmCenter, he lambasted the two film studios most often credited with saving the indie film – Neon and A24 – challenging audiences to learn more about where their investment dollars are sourced. And he walked out determined to rave on in Denver, inviting anyone present to join him next at Globeville’s Fort Greene bar, which just won a big award from the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts. He also left with this tease: “I have a really big Pulitzer Prize-winning play that I’m producing as a movie that will be announced in two weeks.”

That actually leaves a large field of potential contenders: “Purpose” (2025) by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, “Primary Trust” (2024) by Eboni Booth, “Fat Ham” (2022)  by James Ijames and “The Hot Wing King (2021) by Katori Hall.

“Erupcja” continues with at least one daily screening at the Sie Film Center, even while SeriesFest plays out there throughout this weekend. Tickets at denverfilm.org.

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected].