Revenge is mad hard : Fat Ham and the question of cultural reclamation / Valerie Clayman Pye, Danielle Rosvally, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pye, Valerie Clayman, editor.

Rosvally, Danielle, editor.

Series:

Reproducing Shakespeare

Reproducing Shakespeare, 2730-9304

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ijames, James. Fat ham.

Ijames, James.

Ijames, James--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Adaptations--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Genre:

Adaptations.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xviii, 292 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2025]

Summary:

"In April of 2021, a small theatre in Philadelphia took a big risk: The Wilma premiered a new play called Fat Ham by a then-almost-unknown playwright, James Ijames. Fat Ham reconfigures the story of Hamlet through the lens of a family barbeque in the American South. In Ijames' play, Shakespeare's protagonist becomes a fat, queer, Black man named Juicy. Juicy's mother has just married his uncle in the wake of his father's murder and Juicy himself is still dealing with grief about these events and the generational trauma they amplify as he strives for some thread of hope. The play made big waves; Ijames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it was nominated for five Tony awards in 2023. Fat Ham represents a major intervention in the ways we discuss storytelling, adaptation, and canon as it reclaims a major piece of cultural capital for several intersections of marginalized voices. This collection of essay offers perspectives on the play's early life as well as creates a major theoretical framework for future discussions of Fat Ham in scholarship.The essay featured in Revenge is Mad Hard: Fat Ham and the Question of Cultural Reclamation address the intersecting themes of Adaptation, Performance, Identity, and Southerness. Each of these sections work to more fully specify and develop the themes of Fat Ham in the greater sphere of literary and performance studies"--Back cover.

Contents:

Who's there?: black storytelling legacies, theatrical histories, and Fat Ham / Valerie Clayman Pye and Danielle Rosvally

Dramaturgy. "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 / Trevor Boffone and Danielle Rosvally

"Wear your rue with a difference" : James Ijames's Fat Ham spells autumn for the patriarchs / Tom Cartelli

Karaoke dreaming: Fat Ham and the 'Ghost in the (Hamlet) machine' / Valerie Clayman Pye

"A different thing all together": liminalities of time in Fat Ham's American South / I.B. Hopkins, Megha Pancholi, and Michael Vaclav

Preparation. Irreverent reverence or playing with Shakespeare: an Interview with Saheem Ali / Valerie Clayman Pye

You see what happened there?": soliloquies, reality confessionals and queer phenomenology in Fat Ham / Bess Rowen

An open book, kind of: open-ended stage directions in James Ijames' Fat Ham / Emma Adler

This queen is no pawn: Tedra, an autoethnographic account / Mya Brown

Embodied actualization. Fat Ham: choosing pleasure over harm in fat positive representation / Jordan Mattson

Soft and sticky: Fat Ham and the tackiness of queer embodiment / Alex Ferrone

"I want to bless somebody with how soft I can be": disidentifications with softness in James Ijames' Fat Ham / Teya Juarez

"I wanted you to see me in my uniform": Larry, queerness, and reflections of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"in Fat Ham / H. Gelfand

Endings. The view of the elders: an interview / T.J. Yount

"We tragic:" tragic individuals and community in Fat Ham and Kill Move Paradise / Sara Sanchez-Zweig

Barbecue and the Bard: southern foodways and traumatic consumption in Fat Ham / Corinne Zeman

They eat. They talk shit": the role of barbecue in Fat Ham's queer utopia / Emily Parise

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9783031978869

3031978862

OCLC:

1573661610