Maximum theater subscriptions be offering a patron get entry to to a unmarried theater’s season. However Philadelphia’s new Citywide James Ijames Move supplies tickets to a few James Ijames – pronounced EYE-ms, rhymes with “chimes” – performs at 3 theaters in Philadelphia. Subscribers will even get one mustard-colored beanie, considered one of Ijames’ signature equipment.
The total cross, which prices US$130, comprises tickets for the Arden Theatre’s “Good Bones,” which premiered Jan. 22 and runs via March 22, the Wilma Theater’s “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” which runs March 17 to April 5, and the Philadelphia Theatre Corporate’s “Wilderness Generation,” an international premiere that runs April 10 to Might 3. There could also be a two-show cross for $90 with out “Good Bones.”
I’m a theater theorist, historian and practitioner who has written about Ijames’ paintings earlier than and after his 2022 Pulitzer Prize. I imagine this landmark collaboration between 3 essential Philadelphia theaters is a becoming party of a multi-hyphenate theater artist who continues to champion his longtime inventive house.
Actor, playwright, director
Ijames, 46, was once born in North Carolina and attended Morehouse Faculty in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his Grasp of Superb Arts stage at Temple College and stayed in Philadelphia after graduating.
Particularly, this playwright’s MFA is within the find out about of performing. Ijames could also be a skilled director, and he carried out and directed at a couple of theaters round Philadelphia earlier than beginning to paintings as a playwright. He was once additionally a tenured professor of theater at Villanova College, the place I had the privilege to paintings with him and watch his inventive procedure earlier than he moved to New York Town in 2025 to run the playwriting focus at Columbia College.
Ijames was once already an area superstar in Philly earlier than profitable the Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Fat Ham,” his Hamlet adaptation focused on a queer Black Hamlet named Juicy and the legacy of his father’s fish fry joint. The New York theater scene took realize of him when the Nationwide Black Theatre staged “Kill Move Paradise” in 2017. This haunting piece is ready in limbo, the place unarmed Black males who’ve been killed through police read about how they have got come to this position and the way society continues to permit this development.
Different Ijames performs come with “White,” a satire of the artwork international that tells the tale of a homosexual white male artist who hires a Black lady actor to faux to have achieved his paintings to peer if that makes a distinction in how his artwork is seen. “TJ Loves Sally 4Ever” units Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ dating on a school campus the place “TJ” is a dean and Sally is a pupil. And “Reverie” is a chamber play, which is an intimate meditation with an earnest and somber tone. In it, the daddy of a just lately deceased Black homosexual guy comes to fulfill the person he believed was once his son’s spouse.
Maximum just lately, in 2025, Ijames partnered with the Australian pop singer Sia on a musical referred to as “Saturday Church.” This can be a tale about reconciling queer neighborhood and Christian religion, and depending at the strengthen of circle of relatives, each organic and selected.
The forged and group of ‘Fat Ham’ throughout the outlet evening curtain name on the Roundabout American Airways Theatre on Broadway on April 12, 2023.
Bruce Glikas/WireImage by way of Getty Pictures
Charting new dramatic territory
Even supposing his theatrical types and genres range, at his core, Ijames writes nuanced, character-driven works that revolve round interpersonal relationships. His performs are playgrounds for performers, in particular because of his skill to put in writing advanced queer Black characters.
Influential American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks notes in her 1994 essay “Elements of Style” that the warfare between Black folks and white folks is the default trope of ways Black folks had been represented onstage – through nearly solely white playwrights – for many of U.S. theater historical past. Parks posits {that a} strategy to steer clear of this centering of white warfare in Black lives comes from new dramatic territory that depicts conflicts between Black folks and anything.
Ijames by no means units his Black characters towards white society on my own. He additionally refuses to take in the tropes of LGBTQ identification as incompatible with faith, or the concept that characters can also be most effective homosexual or directly. As a substitute, Ijames creates narratives with queer non secular folks and pansexual males whose identities don’t seem to be assets of warfare.
The citywide cross
The performs within the citywide cross be offering a thrilling move phase of what makes Ijames’s paintings so colourful.
“Good Bones” is the tale of a now-affluent Black lady, Aisha, who strikes again to her blue-collar native land. Aisha may well be from this working-class group, however her elaborate renovations and white-collar sensibilities make her go back appear extra like gentrification than homecoming, no less than so far as her native contractor can see.
“Miz Martha” follows the titular Martha Washington via a fever-dream-inspired trial in her ultimate moments, as enslaved folks maintain her whilst figuring out her dying way their freedom.
And “Wilderness Generation” follows 5 cousins reunited within the U.S. South after a few years aside, in a position to speak about the secrets and techniques from their pasts.
With theater’s ever-changing and risky monetary panorama, I imagine the Citywide James Ijames Move is a thrilling new subscriber style. The collaboration highlights Philadelphia’s theatrical skill and banks on native theaters operating in combination to construct audiences as an alternative of treating each and every different as festival – a brand new construction that might trade how regional theater scenes function.
