T H E AT E R
Philadelphia is filled with incredible artists, writers, actors, directors, and designers. If you don’t believe me, ask 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames. “It’s a great town because there are first rate artists here,” Ijames says. “I think our audiences are very smart and they challenge the art.” Ijames, originally from North Carolina, has been a leader in the Philadelphia arts community for a number of years now. In addition to his celebrated plays that have been performed at many of the city’s theater companies (including both Reverie at Azuka Theatre and TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever at Theatre Horizon this season), Ijames is an educator at Villanova and the lead artistic director for the Wilma Theater’s 21-22 season. Recently, he directed Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (also a Pulitzer Prize winning show) at the Wilma. For almost 20 years – after graduating Temple University with a master’s in fine arts – Ijames has resided in Philadelphia and has made it his home. “This is home in a lot of ways in that my community of friends and collaborators are here. I fell in love here. I got married here, so there is a very real connection to the city.” Right now, Ijames is spending some time outside of the city. His Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fat Ham, is being presented at New York’s Public Theater through the end of July. The story is his take on Shakespeare’s classic Hamlet and follows Juicy - a queer, southern college student who is seeing the ghost of his dead father at a family barbeque. The play got its legs here in Philly as Ijames is a member at large of Azuka Theatre’s New Pages playwriting organization, which celebrates Philadelphia voices from just an idea to a full production-ready script. In 2019, he debuted the play at an in-house reading, followed by a public reading in February of 2020. During the Covid shutdown, Fat Ham was filmed and streamed for Wilma Theater audiences to view at home. Now that Fat Ham is live on stage, Ijames sees the “beautiful dance” the audience and the actors do every night. “It starts from a place of grief in a way, and it moves to a place of joy and celebration,” he says. “I
feel like people don’t want to forget the thing that we’ve all been going through, which is this pandemic… or at least it is hard to forget, but I do think people are in a space where they want to find joy again, so the play offers an opportunity for that.” The Public Theater recently announced that Ijames will be presenting his play Good Bones next spring which explores gentrification and the price of the American dream. “It’s a way to talk about the history
“This is home in a lot of ways in that my community of friends and collaborators are here. I fell in love here. I got married here, so there is a very real connection to the city.” of a neighborhood,” Ijames says. “What is the responsibility of the people who move into a neighborhood that has a deep and rich history?” Next season in Philadelphia, you can see the world premiere of his play Abandon at Theater Exile, directed by Brett Ashley Robinson with a May 2023 opening. Earlier this year, Abandon was presented as a one-night-only virtual reading through Theater Exile’s new play development program, Studio X-hibition. It follows an older woman who lives alone and is haunted by the ghost of her son. A young man breaks into her home late at night and the two of them form a relationship. “It’s a sweet little play, very different from Fat Ham which is a lot louder and a little bit more boisterous,” Ijames says. As for the future of Fat Ham, Ijames would like to see it performed in theaters across the world - but especially back home in North Carolina. “So that my family can all go to see it. I would really love that.” And on the play’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Ijames says “It was a nice moment of me going, ‘Yeah. I’m not crazy. The things that I’m writing, the things that I’m doing, people do want to be connected to that work.’ So that was really an amazing feeling for me.” Read more about James Ijames and his plays at www.jamesijames.com. PRH
JAMES IJAMES Philly is home to Pulitzer PrizeWinning Playwright
by Marialena Rago photo by Wide Eyed Studios
July / August / September 2022
| ROWHOME MAGAZINE | 77
