“I been ghosting for a full week. I know how this work”: Ghosting, Text, and Digital Fat Ham as Pandemic Praxis: An Interview with James Ijames

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters worldwide, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre flipped their 20–21 season online, introducing Fat Ham to the world (and, as it turns out, the world loved it). From the Wilma, the show has made the rounds to off-Broadway, then Broadway, a Pulitzer Prize win, and is now working a robust regional circuit. Thus far, media surrounding Fat Ham has largely focused on the play’s Black Queer take on a canonical work. In this interview with playwright James Ijames, the authors discuss several so-far under-considered aspects of the play: the ways Ijames considered text, ghosting, and intermediality in his Southern-inspired remix of a play. With Ijames, we discuss his development process for the text of Fat Ham, what it was like to pivot to a digital film-play, life after the Pulitzer, and Ijames’ point of view about the current theatrical movements toward redressing the pervasive Whiteness of the American Theatre. We also discuss musical choices made by various productions, and a few nuts-and-bolts realities of the original Wilma production.