Latest news with #JamesIjames
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘What if everyone didn't die?' The queer, Pulitzer-winning, happy-ending Hamlet
When he was still in his 20s and studying for a master's degree in acting, James Ijames was advised to take a swerve away from all things Shakespearean. His tutors thought his southern accent, the product of an upbringing in North Carolina, was not conducive to declaiming Elizabethan verse. Believing them, he did just one professional Shakespeare production in 10 full years of treading the boards. Now Ijames is righting that old wrong, although he does not see it quite that way. Fat Ham, his latest drama, is based on Hamlet and features a queer protagonist called Juicy, who is commanded by the ghost of his murdered father to avenge his death. Significantly, Juicy hails from a Black American family in North Carolina. 'The thing I kept hearing over and over,' he says, 'was that my regionalism – the slowness of my southern accent – would make it difficult for me to do Shakespeare. I did avoid it for those reasons. That's a little bit of what's in this. I wanted to take this thing I was told I couldn't access and see if I could make it work for me.' It worked all right. Fat Ham was feted on Broadway, winning a Pulitzer prize and amassing five Tony award nominations. Next month, the play is coming to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon for its European premiere. Ijames, a playwright with more than 15 dramas under his belt, conceived the idea eight years ago, as he gravitated back to Shakespeare. An easy-going presence with a calm, donnish air, Ijames now makes a robust case for his right to Shakespeare. 'I was raised in a Black Southern Baptist church that reads the St James Bible every Sunday,' he says, speaking via Zoom. 'So I grew up reading Elizabethan English. Yet I was told the way I spoke would prevent me from being able to do that, when I had seen people speak this language with ease and eloquence my whole life. It just rocked my world, at a later age, to realise it belonged to me. So it was a real revelation working on this play.' Ijames has not only embraced Shakespeare but played fast and loose with this most definitive of his tragedies. There are new names, rearranged storylines, with most of the big soliloquies written out. 'I can't compete with those,' he explains. 'I can't be in the room with 'To be or not to be'. That existential crisis won't look that way in my characters.' It's a bold move, not least because of an unconventional programme in the Oregon Shakespeare festival not so long ago, with plays including references to slavery and non-binary actors cast in various roles. Nataki Garrett, the festival's artistic director, received death threats. 'I remember that happening,' says Ijames, 'and thinking, 'This is insane.'' Yet, he points out, Shakespeare hardly wrote from scratch: he took huge liberties with his source material, recycling older stories, borrowing from history. The 'almost scriptural quality' some attach to his texts is not something Shakespeare would have endorsed, Ijames believes. 'He was trying to evoke the audience's imagination because he knew that's where the play actually exists.' Acting, for Ijames, was a circuitous way into writing. In 2001, he says, 'they weren't really taking young people into playwriting programmes. So I went to grad school for acting. But I wrote the entirety of my career, in dressing rooms, wherever, until I'd built up enough work.' Learning about writing through acting sounds rather Shakespearean, I suggest. 'Yes,' says Ijames. 'I don't pretend to be as earth-shattering a writer as he was, but his curiosities are very similar to mine.' Evidently so: Fat Ham is warmer and more comic than Hamlet – but at its core, it is a story about fathers, sons and the cycle of violence triggered by the drive for vengeance. Except that Fat Ham's antihero struggles against the violent masculinity his father represents. 'It's perennial for me as a writer to ask, 'What does masculinity mean?' 'What does the performance of masculinity do?'' One reason he is so defined by this theme, he explains, is because he shares a name with his father. 'I'm a 'junior' – so there's a kind of ownership, an expectation of legacy, that I've lived with my whole life. As an artist, I'm preoccupied with disrupting: this notion of how a man is supposed to act at any given moment.' He wants to explore what lies beneath the ideal of masculinity that young people are fed – an ideal that requires them to stifle many components of their emotional being. 'It takes time,' says Ijames, 'to bring that stuff back to life.' Alongside Juicy in Fat Ham, there is Larry (based on Laertes) who feels a closeted queer passion for Juicy. Shame and homophobia shape their trajectories. 'Many times,' says Ijames, 'homophobia is about not wanting to face parts of yourself. I'm not one of those folks who say you're homophobic because you're actually gay – but I do think you are homophobic because you think that if you get too close to a man's body, then your body might betray you.' Ijames grew up in a large family, in the small town of Bessemer City. His father worked in truck manufacturing ('He's retired military – that type') while his mother taught elementary school ('She wanted us to be surrounded by art'). What was it like growing up queer in this household, in this corner of the south? 'I wasn't in a family that was like, 'Oh, you're gay, get out of here, you're the worst.' They said, 'Just don't get in trouble.'' And the masculinity in his family contained a 'softness', something he puts down to it being mostly comprised of women. 'They were such engines of the family that it changed us. I remember thinking I should be elegant because one of my uncles was very elegant.' What about the greater forces around him, such as the Baptist church? He tells an instructive story about a late family member called Thomas Calvin, who was a theologian. As Ijames's uncle, he believed a Christian had a simple duty: to make the world a better place. 'And that is my framework for Christianity.' Although Ijames has witnessed – and experienced – intense homophobia in churches, he still takes moral direction from the 'social justice aspect of the teachings of Jesus'. Given the changes that have swept America under Donald Trump, it is hard to escape 'strongman' notions of masculinity. Has it ever felt more toxic, more in crisis? 'Well,' says Ijames, 'that's a thing a play can't fix.' He adds, in his even way, that masculinity is hardly one single thing. 'It's a constellation of stuff. I don't feel safer with these strongmen, so what is the strength we're talking about? I don't feel more protected. I don't feel like we're somehow more powerful. I just feel like anxious people – and I'm an anxious person – are being anxious with each other.'All those alternative versions of manhood are there in Fat Ham, rubbing alongside darker elements. But there is playfulness and exuberance, too. Its characters do not seem as villainous as Shakespeare's and the ending might even be described as happy. Is Ijames deliberately creating a state that is good out of Shakespeare's rotten one? 'I was very much doing that. I was curious about what happens if we spend time figuring out what paradise looks like. What if everyone didn't die at the end? What if everyone had a place to live, enough to eat. These are questions about civilisation.' There is violence in Fat Ham and it seems implicitly bound to race and US history, but Ijames does not get into cycles of inherited violence within some Black communities. Instead, he goes down another route. 'I don't write that because I don't know how to be inside that. Joy is a thing I know in excess. It's one of the tricks of being an actor: you understand what offers pleasure to the audience because you have to do it with your whole body. I think marginalised people in general, and Black Americans in particular, are miraculous. I think we should party once in a while.' Fat Ham is at the Swan theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, from 15 August until 13 September
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘What if everyone didn't die?' The queer, Pulitzer-winning, happy-ending Hamlet
When he was still in his 20s and studying for a master's degree in acting, James Ijames was advised to take a swerve away from all things Shakespearean. His tutors thought his southern accent, the product of an upbringing in North Carolina, was not conducive to declaiming Elizabethan verse. Believing them, he did just one professional Shakespeare production in 10 full years of treading the boards. Now Ijames is righting that old wrong, although he does not see it quite that way. Fat Ham, his latest drama, is based on Hamlet and features a queer protagonist called Juicy, who is commanded by the ghost of his murdered father to avenge his death. Significantly, Juicy hails from a Black American family in North Carolina. 'The thing I kept hearing over and over,' he says, 'was that my regionalism – the slowness of my southern accent – would make it difficult for me to do Shakespeare. I did avoid it for those reasons. That's a little bit of what's in this. I wanted to take this thing I was told I couldn't access and see if I could make it work for me.' It worked all right. Fat Ham was feted on Broadway, winning a Pulitzer prize and amassing five Tony award nominations. Next month, the play is coming to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon for its European premiere. Ijames, a playwright with more than 15 dramas under his belt, conceived the idea eight years ago, as he gravitated back to Shakespeare. An easy-going presence with a calm, donnish air, Ijames now makes a robust case for his right to Shakespeare. 'I was raised in a Black Southern Baptist church that reads the St James Bible every Sunday,' he says, speaking via Zoom. 'So I grew up reading Elizabethan English. Yet I was told the way I spoke would prevent me from being able to do that, when I had seen people speak this language with ease and eloquence my whole life. It just rocked my world, at a later age, to realise it belonged to me. So it was a real revelation working on this play.' Ijames has not only embraced Shakespeare but played fast and loose with this most definitive of his tragedies. There are new names, rearranged storylines, with most of the big soliloquies written out. 'I can't compete with those,' he explains. 'I can't be in the room with 'To be or not to be'. That existential crisis won't look that way in my characters.' It's a bold move, not least because of an unconventional programme in the Oregon Shakespeare festival not so long ago, with plays including references to slavery and non-binary actors cast in various roles. Nataki Garrett, the festival's artistic director, received death threats. 'I remember that happening,' says Ijames, 'and thinking, 'This is insane.'' Yet, he points out, Shakespeare hardly wrote from scratch: he took huge liberties with his source material, recycling older stories, borrowing from history. The 'almost scriptural quality' some attach to his texts is not something Shakespeare would have endorsed, Ijames believes. 'He was trying to evoke the audience's imagination because he knew that's where the play actually exists.' Acting, for Ijames, was a circuitous way into writing. In 2001, he says, 'they weren't really taking young people into playwriting programmes. So I went to grad school for acting. But I wrote the entirety of my career, in dressing rooms, wherever, until I'd built up enough work.' Learning about writing through acting sounds rather Shakespearean, I suggest. 'Yes,' says Ijames. 'I don't pretend to be as earth-shattering a writer as he was, but his curiosities are very similar to mine.' Evidently so: Fat Ham is warmer and more comic than Hamlet – but at its core, it is a story about fathers, sons and the cycle of violence triggered by the drive for vengeance. Except that Fat Ham's antihero struggles against the violent masculinity his father represents. 'It's perennial for me as a writer to ask, 'What does masculinity mean?' 'What does the performance of masculinity do?'' One reason he is so defined by this theme, he explains, is because he shares a name with his father. 'I'm a 'junior' – so there's a kind of ownership, an expectation of legacy, that I've lived with my whole life. As an artist, I'm preoccupied with disrupting: this notion of how a man is supposed to act at any given moment.' He wants to explore what lies beneath the ideal of masculinity that young people are fed – an ideal that requires them to stifle many components of their emotional being. 'It takes time,' says Ijames, 'to bring that stuff back to life.' Alongside Juicy in Fat Ham, there is Larry (based on Laertes) who feels a closeted queer passion for Juicy. Shame and homophobia shape their trajectories. 'Many times,' says Ijames, 'homophobia is about not wanting to face parts of yourself. I'm not one of those folks who say you're homophobic because you're actually gay – but I do think you are homophobic because you think that if you get too close to a man's body, then your body might betray you.' Ijames grew up in a large family, in the small town of Bessemer City. His father worked in truck manufacturing ('He's retired military – that type') while his mother taught elementary school ('She wanted us to be surrounded by art'). What was it like growing up queer in this household, in this corner of the south? 'I wasn't in a family that was like, 'Oh, you're gay, get out of here, you're the worst.' They said, 'Just don't get in trouble.'' And the masculinity in his family contained a 'softness', something he puts down to it being mostly comprised of women. 'They were such engines of the family that it changed us. I remember thinking I should be elegant because one of my uncles was very elegant.' What about the greater forces around him, such as the Baptist church? He tells an instructive story about a late family member called Thomas Calvin, who was a theologian. As Ijames's uncle, he believed a Christian had a simple duty: to make the world a better place. 'And that is my framework for Christianity.' Although Ijames has witnessed – and experienced – intense homophobia in churches, he still takes moral direction from the 'social justice aspect of the teachings of Jesus'. Given the changes that have swept America under Donald Trump, it is hard to escape 'strongman' notions of masculinity. Has it ever felt more toxic, more in crisis? 'Well,' says Ijames, 'that's a thing a play can't fix.' He adds, in his even way, that masculinity is hardly one single thing. 'It's a constellation of stuff. I don't feel safer with these strongmen, so what is the strength we're talking about? I don't feel more protected. I don't feel like we're somehow more powerful. I just feel like anxious people – and I'm an anxious person – are being anxious with each other.'All those alternative versions of manhood are there in Fat Ham, rubbing alongside darker elements. But there is playfulness and exuberance, too. Its characters do not seem as villainous as Shakespeare's and the ending might even be described as happy. Is Ijames deliberately creating a state that is good out of Shakespeare's rotten one? 'I was very much doing that. I was curious about what happens if we spend time figuring out what paradise looks like. What if everyone didn't die at the end? What if everyone had a place to live, enough to eat. These are questions about civilisation.' There is violence in Fat Ham and it seems implicitly bound to race and US history, but Ijames does not get into cycles of inherited violence within some Black communities. Instead, he goes down another route. 'I don't write that because I don't know how to be inside that. Joy is a thing I know in excess. It's one of the tricks of being an actor: you understand what offers pleasure to the audience because you have to do it with your whole body. I think marginalised people in general, and Black Americans in particular, are miraculous. I think we should party once in a while.' Fat Ham is at the Swan theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, from 15 August until 13 September
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
George Floyd: Minneapolis, St. Paul events mark his death, community response
Sunday, May 25, marks five years since the killing of George Floyd. In remembrance of his life and the response to his murder, Minnesota communities are coming together in celebration of the movement and mourning lives lost. Here are some events: The artist collective Memorialize the Movement is hosting its fifth annual Justice for George event that features art-making, large-scale mural exhibitions, music and dance performances over the course of five days. The theme of this year's event is 'Radical Joy,' which 'encourages community care, connections, and healing, while continuing to grieve, mourn, and fight for a better future for Black communities.' Thursday, May 22, and Saturday, May 24, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Pillsbury House + Theater, 3501 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis, the organization hosts a free reading of the one-act play, 'Kill Move Paradise.' The play, written by Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames (Fat Ham), explores the brotherhood of murdered black men who 'offer each other solace and reconciliation, as they prepare for ascension to paradise and their new roles as spiritual guardians and saints.' An open discussion will follow the performance. Registration for the event is required. Friday, May 23, from 6 to 10 p.m. at 3140 Snelling Ave., Minneapolis, the organization hosts Paint to Express Summer Kickback. The free event features grilled food and painters workshops, which are hosted monthly by the organization to 'provide the community with a safe space to express themselves creatively.' Registration is required. Sunday, May 25, from 12 to 8 p.m. at Phelps Field Park, 701 E. 39th St., Minneapolis, the organization hosts the Justice for George main event, which features live performances, muralists, a vendor fair and other opportunities for community connection. Registration and/or free tickets are required for these events. For information, visit The fifth annual Rise & Remember Festival serves to remember George Floyd and 'those we have lost unjustly to the pervasive impacts of systemic racism,' according to their website. The three-day festival will include a candlelight vigil, a Night of Honor and street festival. Friday, May 23, from 4:30 p.m. to 12 a.m. at Quincy Hall, 1325 Quincy St., Minneapolis, the Night to Remember gala, dinner and award ceremony will 'celebrate the contributions of the people's work toward racial justice' and feature live performances from comedian Hope Flood, DJ Sophia Eris, Maria Isa, Mr. Cheeks, The East Side Boyz and others. The dress code for the event is formal wear and sneakers. Tickets for the dinner and award ceremony, which begins at 4:30 p.m. cost $44.52. Tickets for the concert cost $81.88. Saturday, May 24, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at George Floyd Square, 38th Street East and Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis, the street festival will kick off for day one of the two-day weekend event. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., a 'self-care fair,' aimed at 'providing opportunities for community members to experience integrative health practices,' will feature wellness vendors and practitioners, along with free wellness services. From 6 to 7 p.m., rapper DEE-1 will host a performance at the square. Sunday, May 25, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at George Floyd Square, the street festival will continue. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Worldwide Outreach for Christ will lead a worship service. Then from 2 to 6 p.m., the self-care fair will continue. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sounds of Blackness will perform a gospel concert and a candlelight vigil will follow from 8 to 9 p.m. For tickets and additional information, visit Saturday, May 24, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul, author Shannon Gibney and Ananya Dance Theatre host a reading of Gibney's picture book, 'We Miss You, George Floyd.' The event will occur outdoors if weather permits and will include interactive crafts and a movement activity led by Ananya Dance Theatre. The event is free and attendees can RSVP at Justice Department moves to cancel Minneapolis police reform settlement Minnesota Freedom Fund to stop bailing out jailed defendants Readers and writers: A guide to Minnesota's spring and summer books George Floyd killing separated Trump from his generals Sunday, May 25, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Venture Bikes Midtown,1000 Midtown Greenway, Minneapolis, Melanin in Motion hosts Slow Roll, Ride to Remember, a narrated biking event that will visit sites 'that were central to the community response' to the murder of George Floyd. These sites include George Floyd Square, the Midtown Exchange building, Powderhorn Park, the former site of the 3rd Precinct police station and 3030 Nicollet Ave., where a Wells Fargo branch burned. A community meal and conversation will follow the bike ride from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. This event is free and bikes can be provided if needed, though they are limited. For tickets, search for Melanin in Motion at
