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[0:00] James Ijames: Hi, I am James Ijames, and welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:13] Alan Seales: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Theatre Podcast, or welcome if this is your first time tuning in. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and this is Intimate Personal Conversations with the industry's biggest names. Our guest today, James Ijames, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who wrote Fat Ham, among many, many other things, and this dude is so introspective and just so focused on what he wants to tell, the stories he wants to express, and it's always such an interesting conversation in a different way when speaking to creatives in general, but when talking to playwrights specifically, just the people who are creating these stories, they have a way of connecting with themselves and with others that is truly unique, at least to me, on this podcast.

So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. As always, find me online on all the socials, leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. If you're on Spotify, there's this question you can answer at the end of the episode to let me know what you thought. I'd love to hear. And all right, here we go with our guest, James Ijames. Here you go. One, two, three.

[1:20] Alan Seales: Today's guest is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, say that five times fast, who recently received five Tony nominations, including Best Play for his hit Broadway show, Fat Ham. He is also an actor in his own right and a professor and a two-time Barrymore Award winner, a Terrence McNally New Play Award winner, and about a winner of a dozen more additional awards. If I read him, we'd be here all day. James Ijames, welcome to the theater podcast.

[1:46] James Ijames: Hi, thank you for having me on. Whenever people read my bio, I'm just like, what?

[1:52] Alan Seales: Dude, dude, I love the way your mind thinks, at least I think I do. And we're going to dive into this because, and I want to start with this, with part of your philosophy that you have written on your website, which I think is one of the most beautifully well-written things anyways. What I think I know right now, you can't own an idea so you can let it pass through you to become some piece of the world. Plays are gestures towards expanding community around an idea. The idea is possessed, owned if you insist, by everyone. And when an idea transforms into a play, more people possess it. I think that is one of the most beautifully well-written things I have ever read. And I want to dive into that to get this started because I think it will probably explain a little bit about why you got into just writing in general, but A, who writes their philosophy on their website?

Number one, that's really cool. But number two, explain, now that you've got time, we can talk about it. So, why write that down? What does that ultimately mean to you and why the need to put it down in words?

[3:03] James Ijames: So, when I was in college, I went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. And Morehouse at the time had offered a degree in theater, but you had to go to Spelman and Clark Atlanta. And I took a class with Crystal Dickinson, who was teaching there at the time. And it's a fabulous actor in New York. If you ever see her name in something, she works in New York all the time, go see it. But she had us write artist manifestos. And I was like, what is that? I don't even know what that is. And it was so, the way she took us through the process of writing that, I was like, this is a beautiful practice for an artist is to sort of write down for themselves what it is that they believe at the moment, what it is that they think is true about art making at the moment, and that that is a thing that can change and evolve over time.

And that philosophy on the website has changed. Since I started having a website, which was, I don't know when I started that website, I couldn't tell you. But that language has not always been the same, because what I believe about theater and what I believe about theater making has changed over time. I just thought it was an important thing to keep me honest, so that whenever somebody reads a play of mine, they can go back and say, is he telling the truth about that? Or when they see a production, they can sort of gauge whether or not the thing that I am curious about is happening. I also think it's great for people who are collaborating with you to sort of know what your interiority is like.

Because, you know, players do this thing on our own, in our little rooms. I have like, there's a script up on my computer right now as we're talking, because I'm, you know, writing this by myself. But in the end, it has to meet other people, and it has to build community around itself.

[4:58] Alan Seales: Plays are gestures towards expanding community around an idea. That sentence stands out to me. I originally was going to give some generic question about, that you've probably been asked a bajillion times, of like, oh, you've written, what, 19 plays, right? Fantheim was your 19th full-length play?

[5:18] James Ijames: Yeah, I think, yeah, somewhere about.

[5:20] Alan Seales: Right? And the majority, if not all of them, deal with Black culture in some form or another, correct? So, plays are gestures towards expanding community around an idea. We do not have enough representation, still. We do not have enough prominent Black stories, still. We do not have, I believe, what you are trying to expand community around, still.

[5:45] James Ijames: Yeah, I mean, I want to help expand the range of storytelling about Black people. And I think I'm a part of an expansion. Like, I don't think it's just me or specific to Mira that I'm the only one that's doing it. I think most people who are Black and who are writing right now are trying to do that in some way. So, you know, I feel like I'm in relationship with a lot of people who are curious about that. And my particular, you know, POV about what it means to be Black, what Black experiences can be in this country, is informed by growing up in the South, growing up in a Christian church, you know, growing up with family members that went to historically Black colleges versus predominantly white colleges.

You know, being in a family that valued art and music and culture more than they valued, like, science and computers. Which, you know, all of that stuff helps shape the kind of Black person that I am. And so, like, I wanted to make space for that perspective and to sort of write that down so that it can be in conversation with what someone else is doing. Like, you know, you can see my play, but then you can also see a play that is about a great travail that is happening to a Black character or a great tragedy that's happening to a Black character. And that both of those things are necessary in the same way that we will go see King Lear, and then we will also go see Noises Off. That there's no questioning of the value of both of those things in the theater.

Whereas I do think that there's some questioning about the value or the importance of, let's say, a Black comedic story over a Black tragedy or a Black drama. I want to write plays that feature Black people and tell Black stories that make people laugh, but also, like, make people really reconsider how they see the world. And that's, I mean, that's kind of the project. And I think that runs through everything at varying degrees. I don't think I've written a single play that's all serious, and I don't think I've written a single play that's all comedy. So I think they have to be married a bit.

[8:31] Alan Seales: Well, I'm going to get into the through lines because I want to know where your love of Greek mythology and mythology comes in in general. So we'll get back to that. But you mentioned your childhood growing up in the South. I grew up in North Wilkesboro, which I believe you know where that is. North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

[8:40] James Ijames: Yes.

[8:41] Alan Seales: So I don't think we were very far from each other.

[8:45] James Ijames: No, we weren't. I was in Gaston County.

[8:47] Alan Seales: Yeah. So I know exactly where you grew up. So go back then though, because you said you had a family that valued arts and music over science and math and whatnot. So tell me about that experience. Was your whole family into performing?

[9:03] James Ijames: Well, I just grew up around art and a quest for beauty. My mother always made sure that there was art on the walls that looked like us. And we made sure that we got to museums and that we did art. We did art camps, and we saw plays. And all of that stuff was really important to us when we were interested in music or dance. My mother made sure that those things were top priorities for us. And I shouldn't say that she didn't. She would also bring computers home every summer for us to work on in the summertime. But I just played organ trail all the time, because I didn't. That wasn't for me. I was never going to be an engineer. I was never going to be a scientist. I hate math. And my uncle is a musician.

Many people in my family are talented visual artists, even though they never did anything with it professionally. They're storytellers, even though they're not writing things down. And then the other thing that I always think about with my family is the way that they decorated their homes, and the way that they dress themselves was this really intense artistic expression. My Aunt Terry, who I lived with when I was in college, I'm very close to, has a beautiful home. And you walk in, and you can see her in that house. She's on every surface, her and her husband. And it's true for my mother's house and my aunt's house. They curated these spaces for themselves that felt really beautiful. And that beauty was a value, that something that was aesthetically beautiful had value.

I remember going with my grandmother's thrift shopping. And she would find a handbag, and she would say, oh, this is... And she would know the name brand or whatever. And she could show you why it was good, and why it was quality, and why it was beautiful. And so, a quest or a thirst for beauty has always been at the core of my thinking about how I wanted to engage with the world. And that translated into music. For me, I loved singing in choir, because it's a bunch of people trying to do a single thing together. And that is so powerful and special to me. But that grows out of this impulse that I was sort of born into. And the other thing I should talk about is making sure that we saw great films.

We saw whatever was the cutting edge of black cinema, and just cinema in general. I remember when Disney movies came out, we would go see all of those. So, there was a real premium and value on culture as a value. And so, that's never really left me.

[12:30] James Ijames: Kind of the, I'll say, like, if you're a misfit, and not saying misfit in a bad way at all, but where you don't kind of fit in with the jocks or the popular kids, which is, I'm speaking for myself, I found my home with the misfits, with the people who didn't really fit in anywhere else, right? But then it didn't occur to me until much later in life that there's a whole side to the business that's not standing on stage in the spotlight. So, how did all this play out for you? Because you have done performing, and now you're teaching, but you're just an unbelievable talent for writing. So, was it someone or something that you were like, I'm going to try writing this? And then that moment of like, oh, I'm good at it.

[13:18] James Ijames: Yeah. When I think back to the very beginning of me writing, when I was very young, I wrote little poems that were not very good. Or they were like, a young person wrote them. Let me be easy on myself. Let me be gentle with myself. I would write little poems. That started to translate into writing, you know, small plays, but like, not really, like, understanding that you write that a person's name, and then they say something like, okay, this is a play, like, not understanding plot, not understanding, you know, inciting incident. I didn't have any of that. This is me at like, you know, 15 years old. And, you know, the two, my family as a whole has been incredibly supportive of me, you know, my entire life.

But I just, my grandmother directed that first play that I wrote when I was like, 15 years old at church. And like, that was a moment of like, oh, that's really incredible that somebody memorized those words, and then said them, and they mean it. That was, you know, really special to me. And it felt intimate in a way that I thought was really exciting, which I think is the genesis of my idea about expanding community. And then I have another aunt who has just always said to me, when I was trying to act, I remember her saying this to me, and I was like, don't talk to me about this. She'd say, you're a writer. I think you're going to write. I think the writing is the thing that's going to, wow, Juanita, she used to say this to me all the time.

It's the writing. I think that's the thing that's going to. And at the time, I was sort of, I was slightly frustrated by it, because I was like, but I want to be an actor. I don't want to write. At that time, I didn't want to write. And then the more I acted, the more I was like, oh, somebody needs to write for me. Like, there's nobody that's writing things that feel exciting to me, for me to play at that time. I think that's not true anymore. If I was an actor right now, it's like a schmorten sport. But at the time, there wasn't a ton of stuff that felt really compelling and exciting. You know, if you got to be in, you know, a Brandon Jacobs Jenkins play, that was amazing, because it was like this rich, deep thing.

And I wasn't quite old enough to do the, you know, the great roles in August Wilson yet. So I was in this weird limbo moment in my career. And so that's when playwriting really sort of roared back. It was something I'd always done as a hobby. It was like a really great way to like metabolize how I was feeling. And now writing has always been. I used to journal a lot. And that sort of fell away and sort of became playwriting for me over time. I think I just felt like there was stuff that I wanted to talk about and wanted to say. And I felt like the only way that I could do it, I knew that I could sit down and I could write something. Whether or not anybody ever saw it, I could write it, it could get out of my system, it could get out of my head, and I could move on.

And that's kind of how I started writing the sort of full length plays that people know me for now. I think the first one of those was a play called By and By That's Never Seen the Light of Day. It had a couple of readings, but that was it. And then the next real play that I wrote and put into the world was The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miss Martha Washington, which is the play that sort of started my playwriting career. It was my first professional production.

[17:03] Alan Seales: So, you got a BA in drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta. Is that a performing degree?

[17:12] James Ijames: No, it's a liberal arts degree. No, it's a liberal arts degree. So, undergraduate was just a BA. So, it was a generalist. I did everything. I took a playwriting class, I took acting, I took directing. And then I went to grad school for acting. So, my graduate training is in acting, and that was at Temple University.

[17:29] Alan Seales: In Philly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, then general literal arts and then acting masters. Are you still at this point thinking that you're going to go into performing on stage? Or was it something like just to finish off the degree to get in there? And you're like, where did the playwriting become professional?

[17:56] James Ijames: I don't know when it became professional. It just sort of suddenly was professional. I had for a long time felt like it was a part of the tapestry of the things that I was doing. Because if you've ever spent any time in Philly, it's a theater community where people do a lot of different things. You have actor directors, you have playwright actors. There was nothing unusual about me being someone who also wrote plays and directed and taught. It just was what everyone was doing. And so, it just was a part of the larger tapestry. I think when I started to get productions in New York and at larger regional theaters, and then I had to sort of get representation as a playwright, which I'd never had as an actor.

I've never had an acting agent. I've always just been free agent in terms of acting. So, that was never something that I needed. And I probably could have benefited from it, if I'm being honest. But I never really had an acting agent. I had a commercial agent, but that was it. I never had one for theater. And I had to get an agent for playwriting. And I was like, oh, I have to professionalize this now. And that's around the time that I did the website. Because I was like, well, I need to be marketing this. I guess I need to think about this as a business, because people are asking to do it. And I don't really want to read contracts very closely. So, I need someone who can help me with that. And that's when it became sort of professionalized for me. But for a very long time, it was just sort of a part of my theater-making career.

[19:42] Alan Seales: Hang on, everybody. We're just gonna take a quick break.

[19:47] James Ijames: All right, now we're back. Because I got out of graduate school and was acting a ton. I think I've won two Barrymores for acting. I've won two for directing. That was just a part of the mix of things. And at the same time, I got a Pew Fellowship for playwriting. So, everything in Philly was affirming all of these things that I was interested in. And then I think it was when I won the Whiting Award is when I sort of suddenly had a more national, I don't know, visibility. I guess that's the right word. Which was kind of fun, but also sort of like, I don't know what to do with this. It's sort of like someone gives you a very expensive piece of equipment and you're like, with no manual, you're like, okay, sure. I guess, does this drive? What does it do? Like, no. And it felt a little bit like that. But then I feel like I've been very fortunate that I have had really good guidance once I started to really professionalize.

[20:50] Alan Seales: When you, real quick, I think it's funny that you don't feel like it's professional until you've already started winning awards for it, which is just funny in its own right. But when you do anything in life, whether it's performing or not, if you go out and play kickball with your local league or whatever, like, do you go all in? Is there anything that you half-ass or are you incapable of half-assing anything? You're all in on nothing.

[21:23] James Ijames: Wow. Oh, gosh. Yes, there are things that I half-ass. For sure. But it's like, I'm always late on my taxes. I pay them always, but I'm always like, I need an extension. I don't have time to do this. So, that's an area. I probably shouldn't say that on a podcast because then the IRS will come calling. But no, I think if you're going to show up, you got to show up. I'm 100% in the classroom unless I'm sick or something's going on. I would not describe myself as a workaholic. But when I'm working and when I'm in that zone, I'm present and I'm there. But no, yeah, there's definitely things I half-ass. I'm sure my family wishes that I called more. In fact, I know that they wish I called more.

[22:28] Alan Seales: Everybody, every parent wants their kids to call more, I'm sure.

[22:31] James Ijames: Yeah, yeah. Theater is expensive and hard. So, if you're going to do it, you got to do it.

[22:39] Alan Seales: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And I think, I mean, a lot of what I have seen and experienced too coming, I mean, when I was full-time trying to be a full-time actor, this was 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago. And even at that time, and I don't know if it's any different now, obviously, because I'm not that age anymore. But I was with kids coming out of conservatories that could perform really well and sing really well, but they didn't understand the business of show business, right? They don't know how to market themselves. They don't realize they are their own product. Websites were commonplace. This was 06, 07-ish, right? So, websites were more common, but most people didn't have them. And there were a lot of people that just didn't know how to find work.

I know some people come out of conservatories that didn't know headshots are traditionally supposed to be eight by tens. So, it's just really weird stuff, right? That some of us find commonplace. And are you, I guess, from your time coming out of your own university into now being on the other side of it, I assume you're involved with the casting, at least somewhat, right? With your plays, especially something as visible at Broadway. Are you seeing that the education around the business side of the industry has improved at all? Or has it even decreased?

[24:06] James Ijames: No, I think it's improved. I think that people are much more savvy about their image. I almost think it's too good sometimes. It's a little too slick. And I do miss the... I miss somebody that's like, I don't got an eight by 10, but I'm about to tear this monologue up. Here's a picture my Uncle Fred took of me at a cookout. And this is my headshot. Here's my resume with three things on it. And then they start acting and you're like, oh, my God, this is the diamond in the rough. And I think that we're missing out on those folks a little bit right now. Because to be successful, you really do have to be quite savvy. And I think...

[25:00] James Ijames: There are people out there whose hunger to be in the room and to make something is just so tremendous. And those are the people that learn the fastest. Those are the people who can be the most transformative because they're just operating off of like, basic life instinct, you know, there's something to that. And so, yes, I think that young people are, I think even I, when I was in grad school, got a pretty good business of the theater education. In fact, we had an entire class my third year that was just that. And so, I came out feeling like I knew how to get an audition. I knew how to get in front of casting people. I knew how to, you know, maneuver the industry as an actor. And then, you know, as I started to move into playwriting, I brought all that stuff with me.

And like, the relationship building you have to do as an actor is slightly different. But like, if you've done that relationship building with a theater, it's much easier for you to come in with a play one day and say, hey, I wrote this, you should read it. And honestly, like, the first play that I had produced, it was a one-person show that I, I should go back and say this, I was in a one-person show that I wrote called The Threshing Floor, which is actually the first thing that I wrote that was produced. And that was with Mockingbird Theater Company. And I performed in it. I played James Baldwin. But then, Tom Weaver, who is a lighting designer and who had worked with a bunch as an actor, he had done the lighting design on a few shows that I was in, and we had become friendly.

And he took over as artistic director of a small theater in Philly. And I said, I have a play, you should read it. And he read it and loved it, and he produced it. And so, that is that sort of horizontal networking. I think Issa Rae calls it horizontal hustling, where you're sort of like looking at the people to your side, because we were contemporaries. We were both sort of, we were just out of, well, we had come out of grad school around the same time. And he was just, you know, probably the most in-demand lighting designer in Philly. And I just loved how he thought and how he worked. And we've continued to work together a ton since then. But it literally was me building on the relationship that I had with him for being an actor.

And that was all stuff that I'd learned in school of like, how do you maintain professional relationships with people? Be the person that everyone wants to work with the next time. That's the advice I cannot give enough. It's like, people will remember, and they will choose others over you if you don't treat people with respect.

[28:00] Alan Seales: But how long normally does it take you to write something that's full length? Like, does it vary? Do you ever, like, do you even watch Fat Ham now, productions of it? And you're like, oh, man, I want to go back and change that, or rewriting, or when something's locked, do you walk away from it?

[28:23] James Ijames: You're always thinking that. You're always like, well, I could have written that better. But I don't, now I don't do anything else with it, especially with Fat Ham. Like, it's done. Or it is set. Let me use that language. On average, if it's something that's really research heavy, like if I'm researching a time period or a topic, which is pretty frequent for me, that can take a little while. That could take a couple of years.

[28:54] Alan Seales: Years, really?

[28:56] James Ijames: I mean, Fat Ham, from starting to watch and think about Hamlet to the Wilma production, that was about two years before it was ready to send to anybody. And then I still was working, I worked on it through that production and the other two productions. But Kill Move, you know, on the other side of the spectrum, I wrote that play, the first draft of that play, a week. I just recently wrote something in two weeks. I'm still working on it. It's not done. But I wrote the bones of it in about two weeks. So it depends. Like, if sometimes an idea comes to me, and it's beginning, middle, and end, the characters are, you know, viciously clear. The dialogue is already like, it's spilling out of my hands.

Those come very, very quickly. And then there's plays like, you know, I have another play called Welcome Table that's about a historical moment in time. And it's like, it's taken me a few years to like, get it to where it needs to be. It hasn't been done yet. But it took, you know, a few years of just reading biographies of people and watching documentaries. And, you know, it depends on what the play is about. But if it's an original idea that is coming very quickly, I can write that very, very, the first draft, I should say, very, very quickly. And then it's about a year of work, trying to get it into a shape that's worthy of meeting an audience and trying to build a community.

[30:38] Alan Seales: Well, do you have a general interest in life with, I would say supernatural, but I don't think that's the right word. Just like Kill Move Paradise, you were talking about, it's set in Elysium, which is part of Greek mythology, right? So, it's originally the paradise to which heroes on whom the gods conferred immortality were sent, right? So, like, there's this Greek tie in, and then Passion of Osiris. Obviously, Osiris is an Egyptian lord of the underworld and judge of the dead. So, you've got these kind of like little nods throughout almost all your work to sort of a higher power in a non-traditional sense. Does that make sense?

[31:21] James Ijames: It does. You're right.

[31:24] Alan Seales: Yes! Correct assessment.

[31:29] James Ijames: I am preoccupied with the supernatural and the spiritual. I am preoccupied with death and both the impact on the dying and the impact on those who are left. And I don't know, you know, I do know, and I've never really shared this with anybody. So, you're slightly privileged right now. When I was young, I didn't think I would live very long. I thought I wouldn't live past like 20-something years old.

[32:03] Alan Seales: Was that like a premonition sort of feeling?

[32:05] James Ijames: I don't know what it was. I just had an anxiety. I am now 40-some-odd years old. I won't say how many 40s I am. And, you know, I knock on wood, I want to live another 40 more. But I just had this weird preoccupation with it. And writing about it makes me not fear it. It makes me feel closer to the people that I have lost in my life. And so, you know, ghost haunting as a practice. As a practice. As a profession. It shows up in so many of my plays, whether it's, you know, like, there's an actual ghost in Fat Ham. You know, the four-man-and-kill move are kind of apparitions. The visions that Martha has in Miss Martha are all people who are dead, or, you know, not long for this world. It's always present.

I have a colleague, who shall remain nameless, who said to me, and if they listen to this, they'll know it was them, so it's fine. You always have dead people in your plays. And at the time, that bothered me. I was like, ugh. And then I tried really hard to write things that didn't have any dead people in them, or no ghost. And I realized I kept coming back to that. Now, it's not true of every play. You know, TJ Loves Sally, there's no ghost in that. There's no supernatural-ness in that, per se. But I think it's powerful. It makes me feel connected. And it's something that everybody in that audience can identify with, because everybody in that audience has experienced it, or thought about it, or knows and will encounter it at some point.

It is the, you know, other than the getting born or being born, it is the single unifying thing across life, is that at some point, it will end, it will stop, it will transform, it will become something else. And so, it just, it feels rich. I keep coming back to it. It's not everything, but it is a thing that comes back. It's powerful. You know, I think about that scene in Fat Ham, where Juicy gets to say all the things his father couldn't say to him when he was alive. And his father hears it, and acknowledges, like, he's like, man, I really messed you up, didn't I? He says that. Like, you know, the ghost of someone who traumatized you saying, I messed you up, I'm sorry. It's like, incredible. That's so healing. And I think that's why I come back to it, because it's a way for people to sort of experience that repair, even if they didn't actually get to have it.

[35:09] Alan Seales: Something that I've said about theater for a long time, just chemically, biology, watching stories allows us to practice empathy in situations that we otherwise would not be able to experience. And we can't truly practice that without either experiencing it literally, or by watching someone pretend to experience it. So, it is a form of healing, and a form of bonding, and a form of, I guess, just maintaining our forward evolution as a species, because we're herd animals that are chemically attracted to storytelling. That's how our brains are wired. Right? And so, to put all of this into a great story, with great performances, that's incorporating death, which you're right, everybody thinks about it, and everybody will experience it, either directly or indirectly at some point in their life, literally, until their life is over.

[36:15] James Ijames: Yeah, it's amazing how much of a motivator that is, either consciously or not, because there's a lot of people who run from it, not realizing what they're running from.

[36:20] Alan Seales: Yeah. And I think there's value in helping an audience not see it as an adversary. You know, like, there's this moment in, there's a film version of Ruben Santiago Hudson's play, Lackawanna Blues, and Espotha Merkinson has this really great line, she's like, death is your friend. And I remember hearing that line in that play and thinking, I've never heard a character articulate to me how I feel about death. As clearly as that. It is clarifying. It is not a thing that you run from. It is the thing that waits at the end of the long journey of your life, if you're so fortunate, to say, okay, you can rest now. But if you begin to think about it in that way, it transformed it for me. And that young kid was like, I don't know why I was so anxious about something bad happening to me. I just really had that anxiety as a kid. I think I just was anxious and I was undiagnosed from being honest.

[37:30] James Ijames: Like, this is very true. And from that, I guess it's how I think about what a play should be doing. Because when I'm gone, and this is another thing about, this is, I think, directly connected to this fear and anxiety of mine. When I'm gone, there will still be people who want to do my play, knock on wood, I hope. And that's, in a way, you kind of avoid it. Or in a way, you can't really die. You know? I was literally going to compare it to that. It's becoming immortal, which everybody, well not everybody, most people think they want. Yeah, I don't want to be immortal. I just want what I, you know, there's this old saying from the church, it's my living in vain. The things that you do in this life are not in vain.

And so, I want to leave this place better than I found it. I want the people that I've encountered to be better because they have known me. And I, you know, I know that's not true for every person that I've met. I'm sure there's somebody out there that's like, that's my villain, my personal villain. I hate that guy. Hi, if you're out there. Or maybe not. I don't know. I could be just like projecting that. But you know, either way, I've made impact. Yeah, I don't know. I want to offer people an imagination of something that we don't yet know. And so, that's another way that I'm trying to like, you know, evade the inevitable. Yeah.

[39:46] Alan Seales: Oh, I think that's beautiful. Thank you. Really, thank you for sharing. Hang on, everybody. We're just gonna take a quick break.

[39:53] Alan Seales: All right, now we're back. Fat Ham, though, speaking of moving on, right, it's coming back to the Wilma?

[39:58] James Ijames: It is. Yeah, they're doing an in-person production. The first production was filmed in a bubble in Virginia. So, this will be the first time that they're doing it in front of a live audience. So, I'm excited about that.

[40:11] Alan Seales: Wow. That's really cool. I'm curious the business side of it. The first part of it is maybe too insider baseball, but screw it. So, the first part of it, when you're filming inside a bubble, I guess that's a certain set of licensing and rights. And then, at what point was that before the off-Broadway and then the Broadway? Because now that it's an established Broadway production, there's licensing costs involved. So, how does that all come back around?

[40:41] James Ijames: Oh, gosh. Well, let's just say, everybody that's had an impact on the play is going to be honored and compensated in some way from the play. So, the Wilma, it's a commission for the Wilma. So, they get a percentage based on that. And then, they were a part of the Broadway producing group. So, they get something from that as well, which was really savvy on their part. Shout out to the Wilma. So, they're licensing from themselves, essentially. So, they're paying something and getting a little bit back, too. Well, licensing is done through Concord. That's who Concord has a play and licensing. But they are part of the sub-rights group, and Zaheem as well. So, it's the first play that I have that has that many people who have invested in it in that way. And it's a new experience.

[41:47] Alan Seales: Do you remember where you were when you got the call that it was going to Broadway?

[41:51] James Ijames: So, that was weird, because it was sort of a foregone conclusion for a while, but we didn't have a theater yet. So, I guess it wasn't that foregone. But I remember when I got the call that we knew we had producers that wanted to do it. We knew all of that stuff before the show even closed to the public. We didn't know when it was going to happen or what theater it might happen in. And so, I remember when I got the text that we had gotten the American Airlines theater. I mean, that's a big house.

[42:26] Alan Seales: Yeah. I mean, it's not the biggest. There's some big, big houses, but it's a lot more than we had in the Onspacher at the public. So, we went to see it before the decision was made. And I walked in, and Zaheem was there, too. And I just sort of was like, this feels right. This feels good. And he was like, yeah, it feels good to me, too. So, I think we both felt really good about that theater. And then when it came through, it just felt like we could just ride the energy of the public right into the new Broadway season. And that was a real fortunate sort of happenstance there.

[43:02] James Ijames: Yeah. And coming out of the pandemic, things... I mean, even today, things are still tough for the industry. But coming out of the pandemic back then, not even back then, it sounds like it was 10 years ago. It's like a year and a half ago. God. It was tough. It was really tough, and it still was. And then in the midst of all of these limited runs closing early anyway, because of lack of ticket sales, you extended a week.

[43:25] Alan Seales: That was terrifying. I have to tell you, because when we kind of knew that we were going to be happening in the spring, we had a sense we were zeroing in on American Airlines. We had been in conversation with them. We were getting close there. And then stuff started to close. And I was like, Oh, my God, maybe we need to wait. It was just utterly terrifying. And then we just... I don't know. We just... I think we learned a lot from the earlier part of the season. I think the community seeing that happen, the shows that opened later in the season benefited from a very never-again sort of sensibility. People showed up. I really felt the support and the energy behind the play from the very first set of previews on Broadway.

[44:19] James Ijames: The people really did show up. And I'm really proud of what we did. We did the whole run plus the week. My feeling about the Tonys is, if you get nominated, you've kind of won. I mean, of course, you want to win the thing and go on the stage and say the pretty stuff. But just being in that room, I was just sort of like, I mean, I never in a million years thought that I would be in here, and here I am, and with people that I respect and admire.

[44:52] Alan Seales: Mm-hmm.

[44:53] James Ijames: Yeah. So it's the little play that could, or the big play that could. I don't know which one it is.

[45:00] Alan Seales: I mean, it's such a good show. It really is. And it speaks to so much that's needed. I mean, the main character is Black and queer, bringing us representation on two fronts that we desperately need. And I mean, all of this, looking back on it, like, yeah, you said, it's just the little play that could, because in the midst of a struggling industry, and I hate the term social reckoning. I mean, what's coming out of what came out of everything, right? All of this, there was so much hate, and there still is a lot. But I mean, art, again, is a tool for healing. But I think Fat Ham came at a point when New York and the theater industry really needed something exactly like it. It was just kind of like everything got lined up perfectly, and it did exactly what it was supposed to do, and help bring people together.

[45:54] James Ijames: Yeah. I mean, that was a hope, and that was certainly what we were setting out to do, was to make it, I remember saying, it's got to feel like a party.

[46:03] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[46:03] James Ijames: It's got to feel euphoric by the end.

[46:10] Alan Seales: Yeah. But he did a great job.

[46:14] Alan Seales: So we'll close out the episode with three questions I ask everyone that finishes out the episodes. The first one, very simply, is just what motivates you?

[46:21] James Ijames: The potential for rest. I work hard so that I can rest really, really intensely and hard. So I'm working for the weekend. That's very me.

[46:35] Alan Seales: All right. What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now, starting out down a similar path?

[46:41] James Ijames: The things that you think are strange, unusual, tricky, complex about yourself, your personality, are probably the things that are going to be the defining features of what's going to make you stand out and be impressive in spaces. So don't quiet those things about yourself. Find how to cultivate them and allow them to mature.

[47:06] Alan Seales: All right. I like that. And then, last question, if you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[47:16] James Ijames: Oh, my gosh. That's so hard. Oh, my goodness. I think it has to be a musical. I think it has to be a musical. And I think it's Into the Woods. I think it's Into the Woods. I think if I had to watch something, and that was it, forever and ever, I think it would be Into the Woods. I thoroughly enjoy that musical, and the music is great. And it's an odd story, and it does all the fun things that I think theater could do.

[47:51] Alan Seales: I have to say, though, if I was going to see that with you, it would have to be with Joaquina as the witch. Tell me you saw her as the witch.

[47:59] James Ijames: I didn't, but I can only imagine. She's incredible.

[48:05] James Ijames: A whole new level. A whole new level that I've seen that show brought to by Joaquina. Just amazing.

[48:10] Alan Seales: Okay. All right. Where can we find you online on the social medias?

[48:16] James Ijames: Well, she's not very social. I am on Instagram. I think it's jwimes, at jwimes.

[48:27] James Ijames: Which looks like it's spelled James L. James, but you get that a lot.

[48:31] Alan Seales: It does. I know. I know.

[48:31] James Ijames: I do. I do. I'm on the X app, but don't bother me over there. I don't do anything over there. Yeah, I think that's it. I'm on Pinterest. You can look at my Pinterest boards.

[48:46] Alan Seales: What kind of stuff do you pin? Are you a pinner or a consumer?

[48:50] James Ijames: I am a pinner. I am a pinner, and I have a pretty extensive scenic and lighting design Pinterest board that is just inspiration. And I go to it whenever... Sometimes it's just up what I'm writing to just see how people have realized things. I think design is the area that I am the least fast out with, so I want it to be in my line of vision when I'm working. So I'm constantly looking at scenic and lighting design.

[49:20] Alan Seales: That's so interesting. I like that. All right. Well, I am on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook. I think I'm giving up on X, because why not? Leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening now. Let's give thanks to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro and music. Intro, outro, music. And James, thank you most of all. Thank you for sharing that story earlier. Just incredible. I've had such a great time talking with you.

[49:51] James Ijames: Oh, thank you for having me. This was awesome.