James Ijames () is an American playwright, actor, and professor originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. He received his B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and earned his MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is now based. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University and co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Ijames is a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia's first playwright producing collective. His adaptation of Hamlet, titled Fat Ham, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022. The production ran at The Public Theater during the summer of 2022, before opening on Broadway in April 2023. He is the recipient of the 2018 Whiting Award for drama and the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist.
Early life
Ijames grew up in Bessemer City, North Carolina. He received his BA in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and his MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Career
Ijames' work has been produced by Flashpoint Theater Company, Orbiter 3, Theatre Horizon (Norristown, Pennsylvania), The National Black Theatre (Harlem), Ally Theatre Company (Washington, DC), and others.
Kill Move Paradise had its premiere at the National Black Theatre in 2017. Ben Brantley of The New York Times noted that "Mr. Ijames's play has no sense of an ending, or of resolution. It takes place in a nightmare of history, in which events are repeated, fugue-like, into eternity." He compared Ijames' work to the early works of Suzan-Lori Parks.
White was produced at the Theatre Horizon. In his review, Jim Rutter of Philadelphia Inquirer remarked on the play's ending and how it "adds a surreal twist by driving home Ijames' exploration of black women's exploitation by feminism, by contemporary culture and white women."
Moon Man Walk was produced by Orbiter 3 in Philadelphia. Bryan Buttler writing for Philadelphia Magazine praised the quality of the new work, stating "there's a lot of talk about "new work" in theater and opera in this town, but Moon Man Walk provides the kind of artistic quality that the Philadelphia arts community needs to not only achieve with new works but invest in."
Plays
Abandon (NEA supported, Theatre Exile, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Good Bones (Commissioned by Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C., 2023) Reverie (Azuka Theatre, 2022) Youth History of Walking (Theatre Exile, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Matter Out of Place (InterAct Theater Company and Available Light Theater, Columbus, Ohio) Kill Move Paradise (National Black Theatre, 2017) White (PlayPenn New Play Conference, Theatre Horizon, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Moon Man Walk (Orbiter 3 Playwrights Collective, 2015) The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington (Flashpoint Theater Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) The Threshing Floor Fat Ham (Wilma Theater, 2021) TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever (Ally Theatre Company, 2020)