James Ijames is a Philadelphia-based performer, playwright, and director. His plays have been produced by Flashpoint Theater Company, Orbiter 3, Theatre Horizon, the Wilma Theater (Philadelphia, PA), The National Black Theatre, JACK (NYC), Steppenwolf Theatre, Definition Theatre (Chicago, IL), and Shotgun Players (Berkeley, CA), and have received development with PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark, Playwright's Horizon, Clubbed Thumb, Villanova Theater, Azuka Theatre, and Victory Gardens. James is the recipient of the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist, a 2015 Pew Fellowship for Playwrighting, the 2015 Terrance McNally New Play Award for WHITE, a 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize for ....Miz Martha, a 2017 Whiting Award in Drama, and a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise. He is a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing collective, and co-Artistic Director of the Wilma Theater. He received a BA in Drama from Morehouse College and an MFA in Acting from Temple University. James is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University and lives in South Philadelphia.
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WHITEA Play
VANESSA: Have you ever met a black woman…you know…in like, real life that talks like that?
GUS: I’m sure I have.
VANESSA: I see.
GUS: That’s why I think this matters so much. My work is really interrogating my own interiority. But having you present my work, I’m being more true to myself by exposing my inner self through you. Creating a real life version of …the black woman inside me. To be enjoyed by all. I want her voice to be heard. I want to create her with you.
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in The Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph—Racial Tourism! That’s it!
GUS: That’s a new one.
VANESSA: No it’s like…“Let me play double-dutch with the black girls on the playground cause they make me feel all empowered and fierce. They can teach me fun comebacks and how to wag my finger and I can be just as fierce and fabulous as them, but without the burden of actually being a black girl.” I got that right?
GUS: Whoa…You don’t know me.
VANESSA: I don’t.
GUS: I’m not a racist.
VANESSA: This is really awkward for you.
WHITEPremiered in2017- Print Books
- Dramatists Play Service
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WHITEA Play
GUS: Just look at this work!
JANE: This one?
GUS: Incredible, right?
JANE: It’s quite good. It’s very much in the vein of your work, actually.
GUS: It’s not mine. It’s by a woman!
JANE: It is?
GUS: A Blaaaaaa-frican American woman.
(So, a note on this: Blaaaaa-frican American— he is negotiating, in the very moment, what to call this imagined woman. He starts to say black but decides instead to say African American and mistakenly blurs them. Thus creating a new “ethnicity” for her. Let it be as stupid as possible.)
JANE: ...A...Blaaaa-frican American woman?
(Gus: Aww hell, just go with it.)
GUS : Yep. That’s uh...how, she identifies...ethnically.
JANE: Ethnically?
GUS: Yeah. And she's a lesbian.
JANE: Oh I love that! That’s good.
GUS: And colorblind.
JANE: No!
GUS: Yes!
JANE: Shut up!
GUS: I won’t!
WHITEPremiered in2017- Print Books
- Dramatists Play Service
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WHITEA Play
BALKONAÉ: No one was checking for you, Gus. Till I came along.
GUS: This is all mine. Those paintings I painted.
BALKONAÉ: Well, I know that...and you know that...but uh...they don’t know that, sweetheart. They see my name on those paintings. So what’s the truth? Huh? What are they gonna believe, the things right in front of their eyes or some fairytale you cooked up?
GUS: We cooked up!
BALKONAÉ: I mean I understand you being a little jealous maybe—
TANNER: Wait a minute.
BALKONAÉ: But this slander has to stop. It’s very unattractive, Gus. Don’t hate because I’m the better artist.
GUS: HA!
TANNER: This is surreal.
BALKONAÉ: In fact, I’m hurt by this, Gus.
GUS: Oh please!
BALKONAÉ: We’ve worked in the same studio for months now.
GUS: You’re not a better artist.
BALKONAÉ: Oh. I’m superior.
GUS: No. You’re not even—
BALKONAÉ: Come on. Say it with me. “Balkonaé wore it better.”
WHITEPremiered in2017- Print Books
- Dramatists Play Service
"James Ijames has crafted a superbly written, emotionally compelling, and morally challenging play. How challenging? About halfway through his 80-minute one-act, I no longer wanted to review it." —Jim Rutter, Philadelphia Inquirer [on The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington]
" . . . [the] pull between fantasy, fiction, and the raw present is a theme that is beautifully sewn throughout the narrative . . . [a] gorgeous script." —Philadelphia Magazine [on Moon Man Walk]
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Bookshop
- Print Books
- Dramatists Play Service
Exuberant confrontation and giddy reckoning characterize the propulsive work of James Ijames. He is wild on purpose, formally dazzling and virtuosic. His plays take historical artifact and current event and turn them upside down in a series of comedic surprises — but all the humor lies on the edge of horror. His plays challenge pieties about race and gender through concise and ruthless dialogue; he has an extraordinary ear for the pleasures and perversities of the English language. Fearlessly, he uses humor, spectacle, and theatricality to illuminate the long shadow of hypocrisy and denial that stretches from America’s past into its present.