THE PLAYS
FAT HAM
3W 4M
Juicy’s family has been raising and barbecuing pigs for three generations but all Juicy wants, is to get his online degree in Human Resources and get as far away from pigs as he can. But his dreams are halted when his mother and his uncle’s wedding use up all his tuition money and the ghost of his father shows up and tell him to kill his Uncle.
World Premiere Wilma Theater
NY Premiere Public Theater
Broadway Premiere American Airlines Theater
Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama
THE MOST SPECTACULARLY LAMENTABLE TRIAL OF MIZ MARTHA WASHINGTON
4W 3M
The recently-widowed “Mother of America” lies helpless in her Mount Vernon bed, ravaged by illness and cared for by the very slaves that are free the moment she dies. The fever dream of terrifying theatricality that follows investigates everything from Martha Washington’s family to her historical legacy.
Developed with PlayPenn New Play Development in Philadelphia, PA.
World Premiere with Flashpoint Theatre Company Philadelphia, PA
WHITE
2W 2M
Gus is pissed. He’s a white guy who can’t get picked up by a major museum. Vanessa is trying to make it as an actress but finds there is something holding her back. When Gus’ partner, Tanner, introduces Vanessa to Gus they set out on a journey to create the perfect Black woman artist to pretend to be the creator of Gus’ art. A modern Frankenstein story with a dash of Mahogany, and Pygmalion to keep it gay and light. This plays spins out of control as it explores issues of race, gender, sexuality, and art.
Developed at The PlayPenn New Play Conference and The Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival.
World Premiere with Theatre Horizon
Terrance McNally New Play Award Winner
WELCOME TABLE
3W 5M
In the spring of 1963 James Baldwin assembled a group of Black scholars, artist, and activist, a the prompting of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to discuss the state of civil rights in America. The hope for the meeting was high, alas the assembly was a major disaster, ending in shouts, abrupt exits and bitter words. However, the meeting had a major impact on Robert Kennedy, reignited a fire in James Baldwin and was triumph moment for Lorraine Hansberry. The meeting caused the Kennedy Administration to shift to a more aggressive plan of actions in regards to Civil Rights. This play attempts to recollect this moment in time, it asks the attendees of the meeting to questions their actions and their words. To re-member what has happened and how we got here. In the end they all dream a beautiful dream for the future over a bountiful table. But will we learn from their struggle that what has been done does not need to be done again?
Commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club
MEDIA/MEDEA
2Children 3W 1M Chorus of Middle School Children
Shel and Devan’s parents are famous and going through a bitter divorce. The siblings aren’t sure why but they feel that something just dreadful is about to take place. Adapted from Euripides’ play of revenge and infanticide Medea. Our Medea is a famous actress who has been abandoned by Jason, an auteur director who has found a new wife to advance his position and his career. But unlike Ancient Greece, tragedy is the nightly news and getting away with murder is not as easy as flying away on a dragon. Will this fractured family find a way out of this or will they follow the path of their literary ancestors.
Commissioned by Bryn Mawr College
PASSION OF OSIRIS
6W 7M
One of the earliest theatrical events in history is the Abydos Passion that depicted the death of Osiris at the hand of his brother Set and his wife Isis’ journey to resurrect Osiris and being the pantheon back to its former glory. This is my humble attempt to write a version of this in the form of a lyrical passion play. If you like fratricide, blank verse, villains who can turn a phrase, love stories and ornate Egyptian aesthetics: this play is for you!
KILL MOVE PARADISE
4 M
Kill Move Paradise takes the Elysium of Greek antiquity and flips the script. Set in a netherworld prepared for its newly deceased inhabitants, we follow Isa, Daz, Grif and Tiny as they try to make sense of the world they have been "untimely ripped" from and this new paradise they find themselves in. Inspired by recent events, Kill Move Paradise is a expressionistic buzz saw through the contemporary myth that "all live matter" and a portrait of the slain, not as degenerates who deserved death but as heroes who demand that we see them for the splendid beings they are.
World Premiere with the National Black Theatre in Harlem.
HYMN
2W 3M
Little One has the voice of an angel. When his young brother dies Little joins the family business, gospel singing. Little One and his Brother travel the country from Texas, to California, to the Deep South, singing the gospel and looking for salvation. This hero’s journey is loosely based on the real life story of Willmer Little Axe Broadnax, an important Trans trailblazer in gospel music. The play is a reclamation of scared space for queer bodies that have been historically excluded. The spirit is ours too.
TANK STRANGER
3W 1 M 1 M voice
The Stranger family are weird and Tank Stranger is the weirdest of them all. So weird he might be aliens...or part alien? Bi-terrestrial? In this, super black, super futuristic retelling of the birth of Dionysus, the Stranger family discover one of theirs is from another planet and has to choose whether to stay on this slowly warming dumpster fire called earth or go to another world in another galaxy where the people live like ghosts and drink sunlight like water.
MOON MAN WALK
2W 2M
A young man learns the truth about his absent father after he travels home to attend his mother's funeral. This magical journey through space and time takes us literally to the moon and back and explores the black family in the age of Mass Incarceration.
Developed with Ed Sobel and Azuka Theatre Company in Philadelphia PA and The Lark in New York, NY
World premiere Summer 2015 with Orbiter 3 Playwrights Collective
PHEOBE IN BIRDLAND
3W 2M
Phoebe’s mother is stricken with a sudden illness that causes her wonderlust. When Phoebe’s mother disappears from her hospital room in the woods, Phoebe goes to find her. on her journey she crosses the threshold, meets the sage, conquers her fears and let’s go of the past. Will Phoebe hide in this wooden utopia with her mother or will she return to face the harsh realities of life. A not so simple family drama with a bear and three little birds.
Available for Development
GOOD BONES
2W 2M
Aisha has moved back to the block, but the neighborhood’s changed. Boomeranging across the country with her husband, she’s renovating their new house in a post-industrial city on the rise. But the neighborhood’s still loud at night and Aisha’s homecoming is more complex than she expected, so when their contractor is caught up in an act of violence a block away, Aisha finds herself in the crosswinds of legacy and responsibility, haunting and belonging.
World premiere at Studio Theatre
Commissioned by Studio Theatre
REVERIE
3M
What if you could do it all over again? What if you could tell your son you love him no matter what? What if you told the guy you are crushing on how you really feel? What if an address in a book compels you to fly across the country and land on the door step of a stranger, looking for answers, looking for relief? What if you spent all night with that stranger trying to put together the pieces of a past you didn’t know you both share? A grieving father finds his son in the arms of a stranger. And there’s confetti!
World Premiere at Azuka Theater in Philadelphia, PA
history of walking
2W 4M
A presidential candidate makes pancakes with waitress at The Flip N Stack as a photo op. The campaign is on fire, but not in the good way.
Meanwhile, the candidate's sister meets a guy online and they fall in love and destroy things. A political strategist talks to a messiah and has some fun with a dom who likes to make powerful men feel powerless. A conservative radio host becomes a prophet for change and meets the woman with whom he will spend the rest of his existence. The waitress at the Flip N Stack, loses three precious parts of her life.
This play explores the role of violence in our future as a culture, how we can discover the humanity in humans, and how we can survive with out killing each other. Kinda big, right? Oh... and the water is rising.
THE THRESHING FLOOR
1M
A young student goes to the south of France to interview his idol, James Baldwin. We meet Baldwin and all of the people in this colorful life who shaped the famous writer of Go Tell It On the Mountain, Another Country, The Fire Next Time and The Devil Finds Work.
Developed with Scott Edmondson and the Gloucester Stage Company Gloucester MA
World Premiere with Mauckingbird Theatre Company Philadelphia, PA
TJ LOVES SALLY 4EVER
3W 2M + a Marching Band or the theatrical equivalent
TJ loves Sally. Sally does not love TJ.
TJ is a University Dean. Sally is a student.
Issuncomfortable.
Welcome to Commonwealth of Virginia University, where a modern education is rooted in the nation’s “complicated” history. As the campus wrestles with its antebellum legacy and the names of slave-owners on university buildings, Sally finds herself locked in a more personal battle with Dean TJ.
This play reimagines Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson as a student and a dean at a southern American university, and dismantles the legacies that keep us bound amidst a swirl of marching bands, step teams, and bubbly tour guides. How do we reckon with an inheritance we never asked for?
ABANDON
1W 3M
Luella is alone – haunted by the ghost of her son. Joshua is alone – kicked out of his house by his brother. One winter night these two people collide. Luella is looking for redemption; Joshua is looking for family. By the next morning, these two lonely souls are meshed together into an American Family in its truest sense. Abandon is sometimes violent, sometimes healing with a gossamer veil that separates the worlds of the living and the dead, and shame and acceptance.
World premiere at Theater Exile
WHERE WE’VE BEEN
1W 1M
Eric and Erica have known each other since they were 16 years old. They have seen each other through the highs and lows of their lives. In this play that jumps from the past to the present to the future on a line we explore the beauty of friendship, the effects of shared trauma and the healing power of drag and a good dance break.
WHAT IS LEFT, BURNS
2W 2M
Keith is an award-winning renowned poet who has lived his whole life in the shadow of his more famous mother. Both lucky and deeply unlucky in love and sex, Keith begins a tumultuous extramarital affair with one of his students that spans several years. This relationship creates a kind of found queer family that includes his estranged ex-wife Jesse, his mother Vashti who is slowly losing her faculties, and his lover Ronnie, a budding phenom of a writer, who is posed to be a great success in his own right. The poems that each man writes to, for, and about each other act as a chronicle of professional admiration that becomes complicated by desire, deception, and jealousy.
A segment of this play was filmed as a commission for Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was live streamed in the fall of 2020.
Art created James Ijames using AI image generator!