PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As his Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Fat Ham" opens on Broadway, Philadelphia playwright James Ijames is back home with "Abandon," a brand-new play premiering at Theatre Exile this month.
“I'm in New York doing this really big, shiny thing, and my heart is actually in these small theaters that I learned how to be an artist in,” Ijames said. “It feels very right that this play is starting rehearsals right as this play in New York is happening, that I haven't lost the tether between those two places at all.”
Ijames' "Fat Ham," a Black, queer spin on Hamlet, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was first developed and performed virtually in Philly back in 2021, and will open on Broadway April 12.
“Abandon,” about to debut here in Philly, follows two people who were separated from, or who lost, their families: Joshua, a gay man living in a rural area who was just kicked out of his home by his brother, and Luella, an elderly woman who recently lost her son.
“[Joshua] breaks into Luella's house one night because he's hungry, and they develop this really lovely bond,” Ijames explained.
The show explores how these two very different people deal with grief and loneliness and find a new type of family.
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Ijames said his relationship with his family as a Black, gay man is good, but he recognizes there's a lot of people who lose their family when they choose themselves and their most authentic path.
“I think queer people, when we lose our families, sometimes we find our families out in the world. ... There's something that directs you to the people that you need to be around so that you can be okay.”
Coming off his Pulitzer win, Ijames stays grounded in his work.
“I don't want it to go to my head, because I think that's how you get frozen in amber,” he says. “I'm such a, like, not ostentatious person, and now I'm in a position and in a space where that's the world. It's a little bit more ostentatious than I'm used to. And so the only way I cope with that is to turn back in and really focus on the practice of writing.”
“Abandon” was developed through Theatre Exile’s new play development program, Studio X-hibition. Producing Artistic Director Deborah Block says the play was a perfect fit for Theatre Exile from the start.
“I started to read the script … in a coffee shop,” she remembers. “I was just weeping aloud. … It was the essence of the play that just burrowed into my heart.
“It was beautiful and bite-sized and it spoke to the human journey, you know, the tough stuff. And that's what I think Theatre Exile does really well – we do intimacy. We do truth, truth that’s sitting in things that are not always pretty…where right and wrong has a hard time finding a place, and I really just felt that that play did it, and it was so resonant to me.”
Studio X-hibition focuses on new works by local playwrights, offering them dramaturgical development and staged readings. In this case, “Abandon” went on to be fully produced at Theatre Exile, but others will go on to different theaters.
“I feel that if you're going to choose to be living as an artist…that you have a responsibility to the community, and the greatest thing that we can do is uplift our voices,” Block said.
“Abandon” starts previews on April 27 and runs through May 21. More information and tickets can be found on Theatre Exile’s website.