James Ijames portrait by Lowell Thomas.

Villanova University Theatre Professor James Ijames’ play “Fat Ham” has been nominated for five Tony Awards including:

• Best Play: “Fat Ham,” James Ijames
• Best Direction of a Play: Saheem Ali, “Fat Ham”
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Nikki Crawford, “Fat Ham”
• Best Costume Design of a Play: Dominique Fawn Hill, “Fat Ham“
• Best Lighting Design of a Play: Bradley King, “Fat Ham”

Ijames was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for “Fat Ham,” a play that “deftly transposes ‘Hamlet’ to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.” From the “Fat Ham” Broadway website: “Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid, already grappling with some serious questions of identity, when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. But here’s the rub! Revenge doesn’t come easy to Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man in search of his own happiness and liberation. From an uproarious family cookout emerges a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.”

Produced by The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, “Fat Ham” premiered as a video stream in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Performed for sold out shows at The Public Theater in New York, NY, last spring, the play is currently showing at The American Airlines Theatre on Broadway. For ticket information, visit the “Fat Ham” website. While the show ends its run in New York, NY, on June 25, 2023, “Fat Ham” will open The Wilma Theatre’s 2023-24 season. Directed by Amina Robinson, “Fat Ham” will run from Nov. 24, 2023, through Dec. 17, 2023.

An Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University, Ijames is a playwright, director, performer, and educator. He received a BA in Drama from Morehouse College and a MFA in Acting from Temple University. Explore Ijames’ work and accolades here, and view the additional resources below:

• “Fat Ham” Official Website
• James Ijames Official Website
• “James Ijames on Winning a Pulitzer and Making ‘Hamlet’ a Comedy” (The New York Times)
• “Q&A: South Philly’s Pulitzer-Winning Playwright James Ijames on His Big Broadway Debut” (Philadelphia Magazine)
• The Subtext: James Ijames, From Grandma’s Backyard to Broadway (American Theatre) *podcast
• “On Broadway, Playwright James Ijames and Director Saheem Ali Are Making a Meal of ‘Fat Ham‘” (Vogue)
• Chat in the Stacks: A Conversation with Temple Alum and Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright James Ijames (Temple University Libraries)
• James Ijames on “Fat Ham” (Folger Shakespeare Library) *podcast
• “Out of Friendship, a Play Was Born” (The New York Times)
• “Playwright James Ijames breaks down ‘Fat Ham‘ script, talks breaking the cycle of generational trauma” (Entertainment Weekly)
• A Pulitzer Prize winner’s modern take on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (PBS)

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. Tune in to the 76th Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, at 8 p.m. The ceremony is scheduled to air on CBS after striking Writers Union agrees to an altered format. 

“If it’s not entertaining, why the hell are we doing it? Make’m laugh. Make’m cry. Make’m call their senator. But by any means necessary. Make’m do something. Can’t change anybody’s mind if they’re asleep.” – James Ijames, Playwright and Director 

Opening weekend, I had the opportunity to attend Villanova Theatre’s first show of the season, WHITE, in the new John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts. The center is an 85,000-square-foot space for performances, featuring three performance spaces. WHITE took place in the Court Theatre, an open format, 200-seat theater that features flexible seating, a balcony, and technologically advanced lighting and sound equipment.  

I had the opportunity to explore the new space before and after the performance. In addition, everyone in attendance Friday night was invited to a reception following the show on the third-floor Belle Masque rooftop terrace. The rooftop terrace allowed guests to flow from outside to inside easily and take in what was a beautiful evening. 

The show itself was captivating and entertaining, while simultaneously challenging, as it forced the audience to re-evaluate their own implicit (or explicit) biases. The small cast kept the audience engaged throughout the 90 minutes, and the whole auditorium rose to their feet in applause following the final scene.  

Learn more about the show below.  

SYNOPSIS (Drawn from the Educational Guide below)

With a premise equal parts playful, prescient, and preposterous, art imitates life (or is it the other way around?) in James Ijames’ comedy WHITE. Gus is an artist. Vanessa is an actress. When a major museum seeks to showcase diverse voices in their next exhibition, Gus enlists Vanessa’s help to create an audacious new artistic persona to get him in the show. This contemporary Frankenstein story gleefully skewers the modern monstrosities of racism, misogyny, and cultural appropriation, all the while “subverting expectations, cracking wise, and opening eyes” (DC Metro). 

WHITE: BASED ON A TRUE STORY 

The plot of White is inspired by a true story that took place in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 2014, the museum invited three outside curators—Anthony Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), Michelle Grabner (Artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago), and Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA)—to each curate one floor of the exhibition from their varied perspectives and methodologies.  

Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney, Donna De Salvo, touted the exhibition’s offerings as, “one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.” However, of the 103 invited participants, just nine were black. Of those nine artists, one, Donelle Woolford, a 37-year-old woman from Conyers Georgia, was actually the fabrication of a white man, 52-year-old artist Joe Scanlan. This brought the total of black female artists in the biennial down to one. Read the full story in the education guide found here. 

MORE RESOURCES 

Trailer 

The show is put forth as a contemporary Frankenstein story. Borrow Frankenstein by Mary Shelley from Falvey’s collection. 

Get your tickets to WHITE today! The show will be playing through Oct. 3.  

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR 

James Ijames, MFA, is Associate Professor of Theatre and a playwright, director and educator. He has appeared regionally in productions at The Arden Theatre Company, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Wilma Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Mauckingbird Theatre Company, and People’s Light and Theatre.

James’ plays have been produced by Flashpoint Theater Company, Orbiter 3, Theatre Horizon, Wilma Theatre (Philadelphia, PA), The National Black Theatre (NYC), Steppenwolf Theatre, Definition Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago IL) Shotgun Players (Berkeley, CA) and have received development with PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark, Playwright’s Horizon, Clubbed Thumb, Villanova Theatre, Wilma Theater, Azuka Theatre and Victory Garden.

James is the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist recipient, and he has two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Play for Superior Donuts and Angels in America and two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play for The Brothers Size with Simpatico Theatre Company and Gem of the Ocean with Arden Theatre. James is a 2015 Pew Fellow for Playwriting, the 2015 winner of the Terrance McNally New Play Award for WHITE, the 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize winner for ….Miz Martha, a 2017 recipient of the Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise and a 2020 Steinberg Prize.

Jenna Renaud is a graduate student in the Communication Department and graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library.

James Ijames portrait by Lowell Thomas.

Until June 21, The Wilma Theater is releasing an archival recording of their 2018 production of Villanova University Theatre Professor James Ijames‘ play “Kill Move Paradise” as a fundraiser to support Black Lives Matter Philadelphia.

“Kill Move Paradise,” a New York Times Critics Pick and winner of the the 2018 Kesselring Prize “tells the story of Isa, Daz, Grif and Tiny, four black men who find themselves stuck in a cosmic waiting room in the afterlife. This play, inspired by the ever growing list of slain unarmed black men and women, depicts these men as symbols of life and hope.”

All proceeds will benefit BLM Philly. Explore Ijames’ work and accolades here. Ijames received a B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College and a M.F.A. in Acting from Temple University.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library.