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In April of 2021, a small theatre in Philadelphia took a big risk: The Wilma premiered a new play called Fat Ham by a then-almost-unknown playwright, James Ijames. Fat Ham reconfigures the story of Hamlet through the lens of a family barbeque in the American South. In Ijames play, Shakespeare s protagonist becomes a fat, queer, Black man named Juicy. Juicy s mother has just married his uncle in the wake of his father s murder and Juicy himself is still dealing with grief about these events and the generational trauma they amplify as he strives for some thread of hope. The play made big waves; Ijames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it was nominated for five Tony awards in 2023.
Fat Ham represents a major intervention in the ways we discuss storytelling, adaptation, and canon as it reclaims a major piece of cultural capital for several intersections of marginalized voices. This collection of essay offers perspectives on the play s early life as well as creates a major theoretical framework for future discussions of Fat Ham in scholarship.The essay featured in Revenge is Mad Hard: Fat Ham and the Question of Cultural Reclamation address the intersecting themes of Adaptation, Performance, Identity, and Southerness. Each of these sections work to more fully specify and develop the themes of Fat Ham in the greater sphere of literary and performance studies.
List of contents
Chapter 1:Introduction: Who s There?: Black Storytelling Legacies, Theatrical Histories, and Fat Ham.- Section One: Dramaturgy.- Chapter 2- I been ghosting for a full week. I know how this work : Ghosting, Text, and Digital Fat Ham as Pandemic Praxis.- Chapter 3-Repurposing Hamlet: James Ijames s Fat Ham Spells Autumn for the Patriarchs.- Chapter 4-Karaoke Dreaming: Fat Ham and the Ghost in the [Hamlet] Machine .- Chapter 4-"A Different Thing All Together": Liminalities of Time in Fat Ham's American South.- Section Two: Preparation.- Chapter 5-Irreverent Reverence or Playing with Shakespeare: an Interview with Saheem Ali.- Chapter 6-You See What Happened There?": Soliloquies, Reality Confessionals and Queer Phenomenology in Fat Ham.- Chapter 7-"You See What Happened There?": Soliloquies, Reality Confessionals and Queer Phenomenology in Fat Ham.- Chapter 8-An Open Book, Kind of: Open-Ended Stage Directions in James Ijames Fat Ham.- Chapter 9-This Queen is No Pawn: Tedra, An Autoethnographic Account.- Section Three: Embodied Actualization.- Chapter 10-Fat Ham: Choosing Pleasure Over Harm In Fat Positive Representation.- Chapter 11-Soft and Sticky: Fat Ham and the Tackiness of Queer Embodiment.- Chapter 12- I want to bless somebody with how soft I can be : Disidentifications with Softness in James Ijames Fat Ham.- Chapter 13- I Wanted You to See Me in My Uniform : Larry, Queerness, and Reflections of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in Fat Ham.- Section Four: Endings.- Chapter 14-The View of The Elders: An Interview.- Chapter 15- We Tragic: Tragic Individuals and Community in Fat Ham and Kill Move Paradise.- Chapter 16-Barbecue and the Bard: Southern Foodways and Traumatic Consumption in Fat Ham.- Chapter 17-They eat. They talk shit : The Role of Barbecue in Fat Ham s Queer Utopia.
About the author
Valerie Clayman Pye
is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Arts Management at Long Island University, USA.
Danielle Rosvally
is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, USA.
Summary
In April of 2021, a small theatre in Philadelphia took a big risk: The Wilma premiered a new play called
Fat Ham
by a then-almost-unknown playwright, James Ijames.
Fat Ham
reconfigures the story of
Hamlet
through the lens of a family barbeque in the American South. In Ijames’ play, Shakespeare’s protagonist becomes a fat, queer, Black man named Juicy. Juicy’s mother has just married his uncle in the wake of his father’s murder and Juicy himself is still dealing with grief about these events and the generational trauma they amplify as he strives for some thread of hope. The play made big waves; Ijames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it was nominated for five Tony awards in 2023.
Fat Ham
represents a major intervention in the ways we discuss storytelling, adaptation, and canon as it reclaims a major piece of cultural capital for several intersections of marginalized voices. This collection of essay offers perspectives on the play’s early life as well as creates a major theoretical framework for future discussions of
Fat Ham
in scholarship.The essay featured in Revenge is Mad Hard:
Fat Ham
and the Question of Cultural Reclamation address the intersecting themes of Adaptation, Performance, Identity, and Southerness. Each of these sections work to more fully specify and develop the themes of
Fat Ham
in the greater sphere of literary and performance studies.
