This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Welcome to the Drama Book Show! My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:21] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we are back. Do you know David? You might not, because I'm the one who keeps track of all our episodes. This is our 121st episode. Actually, now that I think about it, it might be our 122nd, because I think 121 is the last one I just posted. So 122! That is crazy. That is a lot of episodes. We've been doing this for a while.

[0:40] David Rigano: Yes, and throughout the crazy releases, they haven't always been weekly, but they're still here, and we're still going. We got a store to keep operating at the same time. That also gets crazy sometimes.

[0:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, not only podcast hosts, but also bookstore workers who also have to run a store and run events and host events. We have a big Hamilton signing coming up in about a week. That has been taking so much of my time, because all Hamilton fans are enthusiastic.

[1:17] David Rigano: We adore that. Yes, we do.

[1:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: This being the house that Hamilton built.

[1:21] David Rigano: Truly, and there are, I think, 300 people coming to this, to which I believe I have emailed all 300 personally. You've been chatting with me, and it's been fun. Not a robot. Not a form letter.

[1:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, I'm excited to have them all here. Two are coming from Australia.

[1:44] David Rigano: Oh my god.

[1:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was like, bring me a wombat, please. I have a huge love for wombats.

[1:49] David Rigano: We do. We do.

[1:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think they said we can't have the dog here.

[1:53] David Rigano: We can have a dog or a cat, but they never said anything about wombats.

[1:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: They didn't specify wombats. Also, weird trivia on wombats. Their waist comes out in cube form, like a cube. I don't know how it happens, but we have these really deep shelves, and we need something to put behind them so that the plays are pushed forward into the light. That's been a constant complaint. I'm thinking we can do Two Birds, One Stone here, and have a store wombat, and also have something to put behind the plays. I don't see why that would be a problem.

[2:26] David Rigano: I'm trying to think of something other than Two Birds, One Stone to do with that, and I'm not- Something Australian. Two kookaburras in one tree. Two strangers with one cake.

[2:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: One cake, yeah.

[2:37] David Rigano: Two gentlemen with one Verona.

[2:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Verona, yeah. Who knows? So today's episode is our wonderful friend, James Ijames.

[2:46] David Rigano: Yes. Just one of the best people to listen to talk about theater.

[2:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. It's incredibly inspiring, and he's also so humble. I remember when he was in the store, and I recognized him, and I chased him around the store to get autographs for the plays. I was like, hi, I know who you are. Can we get some autographs? And he seemed surprised that somebody recognized him. And then, yeah, it was such a wonderful, nice experience.

[3:13] David Rigano: I know that he's teaching playwriting at Columbia now, so I do believe he is based in New York, but he's from Philly, and he's so about the Philly theater scene.

[3:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[3:25] David Rigano: And even when he had a play on Broadway, he was teaching at a university in Philly. He's just really a hometown guy.

[3:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And this event was a partnership with PlayPenn out in Philly. They had just done an event, I believe, right beforehand out there. And so we were the New York stop for that event.

[3:46] David Rigano: And it was great, because a few of them I knew from the Candela Workshop. It was neat to see how everything all is connected, even in a whole different city. And so, yeah, it was a wonderful collaboration.

[3:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We had someone else here who was starting a book tour. And I remember saying, if you go to Philly, who you have to get, and I was like, there's no way that you don't know this person, but it's James Ijames. And she was immediately like, oh, I love him. And yes, he's the most remarkable person to talk about theater.

[4:19] David Rigano: Truly.

[4:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He just, yeah, it's inspiring. He makes you want to go out and do it.

[4:25] David Rigano: Yeah, to participate, to see, to be in the room of theater.

[4:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And the first time that we had him here, he was talking about Fat Ham. I really apologize to our listeners that we were not recording yet at that point, because that was a great event. But I talked to him afterwards, because something that he said that he almost put in Fat Ham was something that I put in a play that I was working on. So I was like, hey, I need to thank you for not putting this in the course. And I explained to him what the premise of my play was, and he looked at me and he was like, you got to write that play.

[4:59] David Rigano: Oh, that's so good.

[4:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I had just finished the first draft. I was like, oh, I did.

[5:02] David Rigano: Oh, good.

[5:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I just finished it. But boy, having someone like that look at you and be like, that's a good idea. I want to see that. That'll hold you for a while.

[5:12] David Rigano: Amazing. It's just inspiring. And let's let that inspiration flow.

[5:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And hear what James Ijames has to say.

[5:19] James Ijames: Hey, hello. Hi. How are you? Good to see you. Hello. Hi. I want to introduce the rest of the folks I'm going to be speaking with tonight. Che’Rae Adams, who is the Artistic Director of PlayPenn. Come on out. Is this your seat? I just grabbed a seat. Okay, you sit.

[5:38] Che’Rae Adams: No, you're fine. I just grabbed my purse.

[5:41] James Ijames: And then I'll do this, because we're professionals. And then we have two performers from The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miss Martha Washington from the Wilma Theater, Kimberly S. Fairbanks and Nancy Boykin.

[6:00] Kimberly S. Fairbanks: They're coming from around the other way.

[6:06] James Ijames: Okay. Hello, everybody. I was going to turn off my phone. It's not working. So if my phone rings.

[6:13] Che’Rae Adams: Okay. Is that better, Emanuel? Okay.

[6:19] James Ijames: Oh, my goodness. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming. We are excited that this year there's three James Ijames plays in Philly being produced. And Miss Martha was developed at PlayPenn. So we thought, oh, we should talk to James about that and the actors that worked on the show and what capacity they worked on the show. So here we are. And here you are. So thank you for being here. So I guess, Nancy, do you want to talk a little bit about because you have a little origin story about Miss Martha that I like for you to tell? It may not all be true.

[7:02] Nancy Boykin: My memory is that James and I were at Temple University together at the same time. He was getting his master's degree in acting, and I was teaching acting across the hall. And we knew each other through the program. And one day, James met me after my class and said, I've written a play. And I went and I was with PlayPenn at that time. I went, great, let me see. Sure, I'll read it. And I sat down and read that play. And the next day, I walked in and said, James, you are a playwright. And he said, I wrote this play because I know that you are from Virginia, and Martha Washington is from Virginia. And I thought if it would pass muster with you, it might be worthy. And that was the beginning of our relationship many moons ago.

And I had the good fortune to do the first production of Miss Martha. And then we've just closed the one that we got to do together in Philadelphia, very different production. So that's my history. I'm also the chairman of the board of PlayPenn now because I guess my history with the group was so important to me personally that I've been on the board and supported it and done readings with it for 20 years now. And it's something I'm devoted to. So that's why I'm here.

[8:17] Kimberly S. Fairbanks: Yeah. And Kimberly's on the PlayPenn board as well, and is in the current production.

[8:27] Nancy Boykin: Have you developed anything? You were in Fat Ham.

[8:31] Kimberly S. Fairbanks: I was in Fat Ham. I've known James for years. We acted together years ago. And I had the great fortune of being in Fat Ham, the filmed version prior to it winning its Pulitzer. And so it was an amazing experience. I love working on new work. I love getting an opportunity to dive into something that no one else has touched before and see what develops and what I feel and what I find from it. So having an opportunity to work on Fat Ham, having an opportunity to work on James's work is always amazing. He was working years ago, we were at the National Constitution Center together in Philadelphia working, and he gave me a couple pages to read. And there were two women sitting in rocking chairs, and I was riveted.

And so it was my turn to go and perform. And I was like, I just have one more page. I'm almost done, because I was riveted by what he had written. And every time I mentioned it to him, James doesn't know what I'm talking about, because he's written so many things. But that's what I think is wonderful, not only about new work, but also particularly about James's work is that not only is it poignant and moving, but there's humor to it. And so that you can find there's so many ways that you can find your way into his work. And having the opportunity to work on Miss Martha after Nancy told me there were changes from the original, which is very interesting to hear about that. But so it felt like a new piece to me as well, which was lovely.

And I'm also, as Joy said, a PlayPenn board member. And just another fun fact, I love PlayPenn so much, not only because of new plays, but this is a place where I got my equity card. At the time, they were allowing non-equity members to be readers for the PlayPenn auditions. And so I got to sit in on the auditions and watch the professionals work. And then they asked me to read. And so I got to read and then this new work, The Rant, I got to perform in it. And that's how I got my equity card. So it will always be near and dear to my heart.

[10:33] James Ijames: How many of you are writers? Raise your hand. Okay. Are you aware of the amazing actors in Philly? It's crazy. They're really talented. It's a good place to try and get your work done for sure.

[10:46] Che’Rae Adams: Can we talk a little bit about development? I'm not sure that everyone knows what happens in a room when you're developing a play. So do you want to hear a little bit about that and go from there?

[10:55] James Ijames: Okay. Yeah. The PlayPenn experience of development is, as I remember it, it's quite unique. You're in the room with the actors, a director, a dramaturg. I think when I was doing it, there were designers in the room as well you could talk to. And you worked for two weeks on the play. You got two readings. So you could hear the play once and then you could mess with it if the joke didn't land. It really gave you some real-time feedback on the play so that you could see whether or not you could move the dial a little bit. But it's a lot of reading the play, a lot of talking about the play, a lot of asking questions of both the play and the playwright, which I think is, for me personally, I'll say that's the most productive way that I like to receive feedback.

I don't really love prescriptive feedback. I bristle at prescriptive feedback usually. And new play development is a lot of, I think, people reflecting back to you what you've written and saying, is this what you intended me to feel, think, imagine when you wrote this? Yes? Great. Here's some ways to make it do that more concretely or more specifically. If it's not what you wanted, then let's figure out how to get closer to the thing that you actually want the work to do. And I think that takes a level of vulnerability, a level of you have to let your ego die a little bit, and a willingness to know that something that you wrote might not be fully successful. That is a part of the writing process is that you'll write some things that are excellent, superlative even, and you will write things that are just outright bad, and that you must do both of those things.

The act of writing is moving through things that are not quite what you want them to be to get closer to what you want them to be. And new play development is unique from working on a novel or a collection of poetry because you really have to make a piece of literature that is both aesthetically beautiful but also useful. People have to be able to make something with it. And so I think the reason why the development process is so full of people is because you can't do it by yourself. You really can't fully write a play on your own.

[13:22] Che’Rae Adams: Yeah, true. And PlayPenn have a unique structure, which is we give the gift of time and isolation. So the playwright comes to Philly, and so they don't have any distractions or they have to worry about anything. We put them up and pay them, of course. And it has varied between three weeks and two weeks, depending. But it's a long time, I think, compared to other places. But also the isolation and being able to just focus on the play and nothing else, I think, is key to the work. We also do two readings, usually, not all the time, but we do two readings of the play so that the audience can see how it's changed, so that the playwright can see how it's changed and what it needs.

[14:11] Che’Rae Adams: And we always do a talk back with the audience in case there's a gem in there that somebody, you know, some information or insight that the audience may have, which I think is crucial. I think audience feedback, and they're sort of, it's interesting because they're really intelligent audiences now, and I don't know if they were before, but when I came up, and our audience has changed a little bit in that they're a little younger, and the audiences really get what we're doing, and understand that they're part of the process, right? And so those are some ways that PlayPenn, some things that are important to PlayPenn. And we are losing new play development organizations like the LARC that was here.

It's just, it's been a difficult time, but we're still here, and we're excited to continue to work with playwrights. So, in terms of, can you talk a little bit about the actor in the room, and what that, and maybe also Kimberly and Nancy, about what it's like to be in the room, and what you think your sort of job is being there, and? I think that's a good thing for you all to talk about.

[15:06] James Ijames: No, I've done it before as an actor. You're in service to the, if you're in development, you're in service to the play. You're in service to the play, period. It is not about you. It is not about what role you have, how well you do with the role. It is about helping the playwright bring their vision to life, and making sure that the words that they have on the page clearly convey what it is they intended to convey. And so, it's a really wonderful process, I feel, as an actor, because everywhere else you go, whether you're auditioning, whether you're performing, or what have you, you're worried about, is the audience picking up what I'm putting down? Are they feeling what I'm feeling? Am I doing what the director asked me to do?

And here, you put your ego on the shelf, and it's not about you. It's just about fully living in these people, and it's not about whether or not you get it right or wrong. It's about whether or not you're clearly conveying, or the writer has written what they want you to say. And that's such a beautiful place to be in, because it's so not about you. And it's so about fully fleshing out these human beings, and telling their story. And I think it's the purest form of engaging with work, where there are no preconceived notions, there are no expectations, except honesty, and authenticity. And I think it's a beautiful place to be, and I love being in those rooms.

[16:49] Kimberly S. Fairbanks: Yeah, you pretty much said it, but it really is exciting to say someone's words for the first time, to hear other people interacting with you in something that's never been heard before. It's a wonderful thing, and it's one of the reasons I stuck around so long, because I found those early readings really exciting. We cut the production values out entirely, so that basically you're seeing the actor, and hopefully clearly hearing the words, so that the text is the most important thing, and that way the writer can hear whether or not those words are really doing their job, or whether those are the words they wanted to write, or whether something was funny. But yes, I think to have been at the beginning of something.

Remember the film, Shakespeare in Love? When the first time the audience heard Romeo and Juliet on the stage, and it was mind-boggling. It was something they'd never heard before, and broke hearts, and our audiences get excited by hearing something for the first time, and imagining where it might go in terms of the play, and just in terms of maybe its future.

[18:00] Che’Rae Adams: The possibilities that it brings. Yeah, and I think creative teams, besides just the actors, but also the director in the room with you, the dramaturg in the room with you, the designer in the room with you. How important is that? Do you ever feel like that there are certain people you want to work with, because you know that they'll get the piece, or you really like to try different directors?

[18:21] James Ijames: I think it does depend on what it is I'm writing. I think when I'm trying to find someone who I want to work with as a director, I want it to be something that they want to do. If I'm doing something that's a joyful expression, I tend to go to Saheem, because he's the Pied Piper. He can bring joy, and wring every ounce of joy out of things. If I'm looking for someone who can build comedy in a particular way, I might go with a different director. I think I try to match what I'm writing with someone whose worldview, their POV, their gifts really align and will lift what I've done. Because I write in a lot of different modalities, it's different for different plays.

[19:11] Nancy Boykin: Have you ever approached actors before directors or dramaturgs, people that you want to?

[19:16] James Ijames: I think actors have to have a very particular relationship with the director. I try to stay clear of that. I give my feedback on audition tapes, but the director has to choose who they want to spend that time with, and who they feel like they can move. Because that's really the thing, is that they have to be able to move the people's performance. They know their ability, they know their language strategies that they use in the room. I try to trust their perspective on who they want to cast. But I also work really hard to render the character in such a legible way that I don't really have to worry about casting. Because they'll usually have to get the person that I need because I've written it in such a way that it requires that type of person.

[20:06] Kimberly S. Fairbanks: Have you written things for actors?

[20:08] James Ijames: Yes. Yeah. Especially when I started out, because I was in Philly and I really had a beautiful group of friends who were actors. I was an actor, and none of us were doing things that we wanted to do. We hated everything we got cast in, and we were like, this is awful, I'm playing a dog in this play, but I have to do it because I need money. And I would see these people and I could see how brilliant they were, and that we were so young. I knew that they had more inside of them because I knew I had more inside of me. And so early on I wrote for people quite a lot. And some of those people have done some of the plays that I've written for them, which is, those are some of the things I'm the most proud of is I think I wrote Tanner in White for Justin Jane.

Because Justin never, he was like, oh, I'm always cast in this way, and he wanted to kind of be, he wanted to feel sexy and like be hot on stage. And I was like, you can do that. You're absolutely capable of that. And I wanted to write something where he could live in that. And so I've definitely written things, but that it was, it's much more early on now. Now I'm much more curious about idea or image or-

[21:20] Che’Rae Adams: And I'm sure your ideas come from many different places, but can I ask you specifically about a couple of the plays?

[21:24] James Ijames: Yeah, sure.

[21:26] Che’Rae Adams: Let's start with Fat Ham.

[21:27] James Ijames: Yeah.

[21:28] Che’Rae Adams: How that came to you?

[21:29] James Ijames: I was in a student-directed production of Hamlet in college, and I was cast as Hamlet, and I'm not really Hamlet, I'm Horatio. I know that now, I did not know that then. But I loved the play. I thought it was really beautiful, and I really identified with Hamlet as a character, as a kind of outsider. And the other part of this is I saw a production of Hamlet that kind of pissed me off. Are you laughing because you know it's what? It kind of pissed me off, and I kind of left feeling like if you don't want us to care about Hamlet, then we won't. So those are two parts of it. And then also, I just wanted to be in conversation with Shakespeare in some way. I tried to do a Henry IV that I did not finish, and yeah, it wasn't very good.

We don't have to go there. And then I was like, maybe I'll try Hamlet. It's big. If I fail, no one will ever do it, and then no one will ever know. But if I do it well, it might make some noise. And yeah, it started because I just love the character, and I love the play. I love Shakespeare in general. I just think I'm really sad that English speakers' vocabularies are so small, and we just don't use as much expressive and quite literally floral language anymore. You have to be sexy and concise and narrative-complete in very little words, and I think that's weird. And I think we should spend more time watching things that are long and hard to consume. You can't consume them easily. I think we've lost the ability to grapple with experience.

We want things to be very comfortable. And the tragedy is that we're creating a world where things are going to increasingly become less comfortable. So what are you going to do? Go watch a long play.

[23:33] Che’Rae Adams: Yeah, yeah. And at PlayPenn, we love community. We do a lot of community events. It's one of my, some of my favorite things. Can you talk a little bit about how your community brought you up and supported you?

[23:43] James Ijames: The first community I would think of is the community that I grew up in. I grew up in a small town that's on the edge of suburbia, edging on rural. So it wasn't quite rural, but it wasn't suburbia. And I grew up with a really big family. My cousins were my first friends. My cousins see most of everything I do. My family doesn't like to fly, so they don't come. My aunts and my mom and stuff. But my cousins see a lot of my work. And then Philly. I came to Philly in 2003 to study acting, and I had every intention of leaving in 2006, and I didn't. And the reason why I didn't is because I kept working. And I was talking to my classmates and friends who were in other places, and they weren't working.

And I was like, that's, that's weird. I gotta pay my rent. And then I was just like, I don't know, I got really turned on by what people were doing. It was a really emergent time. The physical theater companies were making really extravagant, strange things. And I was like, I wonder if you can write like that. And so a lot of what did Miss Martha is me trying to write towards a more physical, embodied performance. And I don't think that's ever left me. One of the things I loved about acting in Philly was because most of the companies were just really interested in these visceral, full-bodied performances, and I really enjoyed doing that. And I wanted to write things that required that of actors.

So I think about Killmove, like the running up and down the hill and sliding down. That, that action is me knowing what the actor's body does. And like, when you put the actor body into that space, what can happen? So yeah, that's how the community in Philly really affected me. I'm building a community here. I've just moved here. I haven't even been here a full year yet, but I keep coming back to Philly. All of my productions this year in Philadelphia, I don't live in Philly. But yeah, it's community is very important to me, and I tend to try to make it everywhere I go.

[25:59] Che’Rae Adams: Yeah, yeah. Very nice. Let's take some questions, yeah? Anybody? Yes?

[26:06] Audience Member: How are you doing? I have just two quick questions, two quick questions. One, when you said that you, you kind of, when you write, it's kind of formulated in a way that the casting doesn't really matter.

[26:20] James Ijames: Not, maybe not like that, but in a way that it's already there on the page. So when you write, are you, how do you feel like actors inform the process then?

[26:30] Audience Member: I feel like when I read your writing, it is a lot that Hammond and Wright, it is like there on the page. So it's like, how do you feel that actors, how do they bring themselves to your work?

[26:42] James Ijames: It was, concisely, it was like how do you think, what's the ease in finding how actors get to find themselves in the work?

[27:13] James Ijames: The intelligence of embodying someone that's not you. There's clues that they're looking for. The actors are looking for the given circumstance, like this is the language, given circumstances, objective, what does the character want, what are they going after, what's in their way? I'm answering all of those questions for myself, for the actor and trying to feed that into the story and into the play so that the actor has everything they need so that they won't falter. It will be different with every actor. Every actor that plays Anne or Martha will do it very differently, but there's like a, I believe that every role has a kind of sphere where anything kind of outside of that is like, you want to build enough of a container for the actor that they can stay inside of that sphere, but there's a lot of places to play inside of there.

[28:05] James Ijames: The other thing I'll say in development, when actors struggle with a line, it's not the actor, it's the line. Every single time, it is the line, because actors can make anything work.

[28:22] James Ijames: You can get the most dogra line and they will make it sing. So if they're really struggling, it's the line. It's not, it's the line. The actor is doing everything, they're throwing everything at it. And so listen to that. And then the other thing that I pick up on is if an actor consistently says a line slightly different, I change it to that. Because one, oh that means the mind's elasticity around this series of languages. Look, I'm not doing brain surgery, I'm not curing cancer, but I can use a little science here. I know that if a person has a tendency towards it, then that's probably going to be easier for them to memorize and easier for them to give life to. And that's what you want. Screw everything else.

You want to give the people that you're collaborating with the material, the fuel to make life. And that's not small. That's a big thing to recreate life on stage. And so you just want to, yeah, I feel like I'm on a tangent now, but it's really about how do you give the actor enough information so that they can run? That's what you really want. Absolutely. Without it being like, "Hey Bob, I know you're an attorney. Can I ask you a question about the law?" Like that's not, not that, but like you can build, it takes time. Writing is hard. First draft is so easy. Just if your first draft is hard, move on. Just if your first draft is hard, move on. The first draft, just let it go. And then you go back and you write the thing.

And that's where you start to think about how it will land, what the people need. Is it clear? But when you're writing initially, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's asking about my play "Kill Move Paradise," what space I was in. It was not long after Tamir Rice was killed. And that was so shocking to me. And I had little nephews who were about that age. And I wrote that play in a week. It didn't, I didn't write it. Oh, and I worked on it for several years, but the first draft of it, I wrote very quickly. And then I put it in a drawer. It was just like a way for me to metabolize how I was feeling. And I didn't think anybody would actually do it. And then people did it. People have done it a lot, but no, it was, it was a, I was trying to metabolize an anger and an anxiety and a fear. Yeah. That's where it was. I kind of wish we didn't need to do that play anymore. You know what I mean?

[31:15] Che’Rae Adams: Here we are. Yes?

[31:18] Audience Member: So you touched on it a little bit, but you have a career outside of New York, but before you came and moved in here. And I think a lot of people move here because they can only be here. So I'd really love for you to talk about being an artist without having to be here all the time.

[31:58] James Ijames: Absolutely. Absolutely. Actually, I'm talking to the, I'm the new head of playwriting up at Columbia now. And I am talking to those kids a lot about, about the value of a writer, finding a community in which to embed yourself, to find yourself as a writer. And I use Tennessee Williams as an example, because Tennessee Williams lived in a lot of places and wrote plays in a lot of places that weren't New York City. And I have spent most of my career in Philadelphia and I think I would be a really different writer if I hadn't done that. And I also think the regional theater is the American theater. We have, we've slightly lost our way in the moment in the regions. And I think that is true across the regions.

And some of that is because we're poor. We don't have any money, but when you go across this country, you go to the Wilma or you go to the Arden or you go to Woolley or you go to the Guthrie, any of these theaters across the country, they're serving a community that maybe never goes to New York City to see plays. And I have found the most success with my work in the regions, not only in Philadelphia, but in other places. DC is a community that I'm really grateful about how much they've embraced my work. New York is wonderful. It's, I love living here. I like the person and the artists that I am here. I have to show up slightly differently here, but I cannot imagine being the artist that I am had I not spent 20 years in Philadelphia, learning from who I believe to be some of the greatest artists of our time that many people don't know.

And they're the greatest artists of our time because they stayed somewhere and they decided to just get really good at what they did. And they decided to serve their community at a very high level of excellence. That is what I was raised on. And I don't know, it's never left. Even here when I'm talking to these kids, if you want to stay great, but also go to San Francisco, they got theater there and a beach. I also think that I'm also trying to get them to remember that the life of a playwright is also living. It's not just about the parties you're going to and you're like in the mix of everything. It's also, you are living, you pass gas and it goes too far and you poop yourself. That's going to definitely be in the podcast, but live a life.

Sleep with too many people. I feel like there's this resistance to failure or embarrassment and it's like, we're so boring now. And yeah, so go somewhere and write plays and let that community love on you and teach you to love yourself. Because I think what happened is that I ended up in a place, I'm really fortunate that I ended up in a place that taught me to love myself.

[35:36] Audience Member: And where you're loved.

[35:37] James Ijames: And where I'm loved. Yeah. Yes. What you're talking about is home. A home. A home. Because my mama's house is home. That's like home, but Philly is. I got my house that I own. It's in Philadelphia. That's my home. But yeah, you're right. That was it. That was it. That was it.

[35:56] Che’Rae Adams: All right. Santi?

[35:58] Audience Member: What do you think is one of the most joyous discoveries you've made in a rehearsal room?

[36:04] James Ijames: Oh, what is one of the, a joyous discovery in the rehearsal room and a hard discovery in the rehearsal room? A joyous discovery in the rehearsal room was, is anytime something I think is funny to more people. Anytime that happens, I'm like, it's a Christmas miracle. Because I feel like I have a very particular odd sense of humor. And I'm finding that it's not as odd.

[36:37] Audience Member: Oh, the most difficult thing I've discovered.

[36:45] James Ijames: I recognize that writing a play is this deeply personal thing. And it does feel a little bit like when people have things to say about something you've written, they're having something to say about it. And I think the real, the sort of difficult discovery is that is partially true. That it is a little bit about you. But that, but I think the sunny side of that is, and the thing that I've chosen to do is to look at those moments of discomfort in the face and go, okay, I'm having an emotional response to this. Emotions are underpinned by beliefs. What is the belief that's underpinning this feeling? And do I actually believe it? And that has helped me a lot with people saying the most insane things to me about things I've written.

Anytime an actor tells me, "My character would never say that." I'm like, you do realize I made this person up. You do realize this person did not exist until I thought them up. So yeah, that kind of, yeah. I think figuring out that, I used to think that you could get through theater by just being really nice and everybody getting along all the time. And sometimes you do have to like, actually, I have a problem with that. Sometimes you do have to do that. And so just discovering that, yeah.

[38:25] Che’Rae Adams: Good question. Yes.

[38:27] Audience Member: Hi. So I teach Shakespeare at Pace University. And I just want to say that "Fat Ham" has really helped me a lot in teaching "Hamlet." And thank you for giving me that, because it gives us a new perspective on the play that's really incredible. And my students love the scene in "Great Mistakes Creek." They just love it so much. But I'm really curious about this one. Nobody needs this one. But someone should do something with it. It's very precious, I think.

[39:18] James Ijames: Yeah. That makes me happy that it's helpful. I always say, "Hamlet" is Cain and Abel. It's a really old story. It's a very old story. We just keep retelling it over and over again. If you get people to understand that, that just like cracks literature open. It's like you're just reading the same like 67 stories over and over again, just repurposed in different perspectives, different facets. But it's Cain and Abel. It's just from the perspective of the kids.

[39:50] Audience Member: Hey, how are you?

[39:53] Audience Member: What's the process in terms of like, you know, you write maybe 30, 40 pages into your first act. And do you stop and then go research? Do you then give it time before you go on?

[40:09] James Ijames: It depends.

[40:10] Audience Member: What's the research process?

[40:12] James Ijames: If I'm doing something that's heavily researched, I do most of that before I even start, before I even put pen to paper. Yeah, I've been working on this play called "Welcome Table." That's about an actual event that happened in 1963. And so I've read, I think, I didn't read all of the biographies, but I read the part of the biographies about this event of like maybe seven or eight books. And then I read a couple of books about the moment. But I did all of that before I even put pen to paper. But through all of that, like if something occurs to me online, or if I keep track of the imaginings that happen while I'm doing the research. And then when I sit down, I try to draft the first draft from beginning to end before I go back.

I don't go back until I get to, I end my plays with "that's it." I don't end with "the end." Until I get to "that's it." And then when "that's it" is there, I go, okay, what is this thing? I go back and look at it and go, what is this? Because it's, you know, viscera. It's like just everything that I've poured out. And I have to go back in and make it a thing. So yeah, if it's research heavy, I tend to do all of that first. And then I draft and then I go back through. And what I tend to do is that I draft, I'm drafting one thing while I am rewriting something else. Because I bore easily. And so I need to be able to move between things to keep me, keep my mind alive. And so I do drafting work in the morning, early, early morning, although that's just very free form. I go like, brush my teeth, have breakfast, bathe, and then I start doing technical writing work.

[42:02] Audience Member: I'm always writing something. Four years? You just got to write a play and then don't do nothing else for four years? Oh.

[42:23] James Ijames: I think that depends on the play. Some plays, like a big two-act play where you're like building a bunch of exposition in the first act and you're trying to set up the second act.

[42:32] Che’Rae Adams: Have there ever been a passage or a character where a chemist, a boy, or a young man, or a woman, come together in the past, and you end up using it for a later purpose?

[43:02] Che’Rae Adams: Have there ever been a passage or a character where a chemist, a boy, or a young man, or a woman, come together in the past, and you end up using it for a later purpose?

[43:22] Che’Rae Adams: Have there ever been a passage or a character where a chemist, a boy, or a young man, or a woman, come together in the past, and you end up using it for a later purpose?

[43:52] Che’Rae Adams: Have there ever been a passage or a character where a chemist, a boy, or a young man, or a woman, come together in the past, and you end up using it for a later purpose?

[44:22] Che’Rae Adams: Do you have favorite characters, and do they talk to you?

[44:42] Che’Rae Adams: Do you have favorite characters, and do they talk to you?

[45:12] Che’Rae Adams: Do you have favorite characters, and do they talk to you?

[45:42] Che’Rae Adams: Do you have favorite characters, and do they talk to you?

[45:57] Che’Rae Adams: Do you have favorite characters, and do they talk to you?

[46:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[46:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[47:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[47:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[48:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[48:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[49:17] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[49:37] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[49:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[50:17] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[50:37] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[50:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[51:17] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[51:37] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[51:57] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[52:17] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[52:37] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[53:07] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[53:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[53:47] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[54:07] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[54:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[54:47] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[55:07] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[55:27] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[55:47] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[56:07] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?

[56:37] Che’Rae Adams: How do you feel your process was in discovering your voice when you were in your early phases of being a writer?