James Ijames is an American performer and playwright from Bessemer City, North Carolina born sometime in the early 1980s. He is currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and received his MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia. He is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University where he teaches acting and also directs. He is a co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. His adaptation of Hamlet, called Fat Ham, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022. It ran at The Public Theater in the summer of 2022, and opened on Broadway in April 2023.
