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James Ijames has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022 for his play Fat Ham, an irreverent take on Shakespeare's Hamlet that premiered as a televised play in the spring of 2021 at Philadelphia's Wilma Theater, where Ijames is a co-artistic director. (Previews for the play begin on Thursday at the Public Theater in New York City.)
American Theatre reported that Fat Ham was described by the Pulitzer jury as “a funny, poignant play that deftly transposes Hamlet to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.”
“I really, truly thought it was a bit of a long shot, but I’m just over the moon,” said Ijames in a brief phone interview today from the campus of Pennsylvania’s Villanova University, where he serves as an associate professor in the theatre department, a resident director for the mainstage production season, and an affiliated faculty in the department of Africana Studies.
Asked about his inspiration for the play, he said, “I have always loved Hamlet, and I wanted to bring it a little closer to my experience, and to write it in the voice and spirit of my family, who are from the South.”