As Shakespeare wrote, "What a
piece of work is a man?"
Well, now a man named James Imes
has re-worked Shakespeare's
His new play, fat ham, recently
won the pulitzer prize in drama.
Jeffrey brown has the story from
New York part of our arts and
culture series, canvas.
Jeffrey: Something is rotten in
the state of Denmark.
>> Now my father wants me to
kill my uncle.
Jeffrey: Actually, make that
North Carolina where the setting
is not elsinore castle but a
backyard barbecue.
>> April 12.
Jeffrey: The son with a murdered
father, not a rinse named hamlet
but a black, queer, southern
young man called juicy.
And the playwright, not William
Shakespeare, but James Imes.
>> It is my conversation with
Shakespeare.
It is me trying to talk to the
guy.
Jeffrey: To Shakespeare saying,
what, for example?
>> I get to say, this is what
your story, or the story that
you discovered and wrote a
version of, this is what it can
do now.
Jeffrey: Shakespeare's story of
course is "Hamlet."
>> To be or not to be.
Jeffrey: And there is little
question it is among history's
best known works.
A tragedy of vengeance in which,
no spoiler needed, a lot of
bodies end up on the floor.
Including the title characters.
>> Pretty cool about your mom
and uncle.
Jeffrey: James Imes version
unfolds differently.
It was first presented in
streaming video due to the
pandemic, produced by the Wilma
theater in Philadelphia, where
Imes serves as a core -- a
codirector.
It is now getting its first in
person production at New York's
public the -- theater.
>> Early drafts are very much
beat for beat, I am tracking
hamlet.
>> I just saw your daddy.
>> What do you mean?
>> He was there, walking across
the yard.
>> Then you get to the end of
hamlet and I go, right, I'm in a
backyard, and everybody has to
die.
That is literally what happens
in the play.
I had to rethink what my
relationship to the ending was,
which made me rethink how I
wanted to tell the whole story.
Jeffrey: This family in the
backyard, loud, going at it,
loving, hating, all of it
together, this is in some sense
your family?
>> Now, my community.
I was always surrounded by that
energy.
I think it is worthy of the
stage.
And don't always see it.
So I wanted to bring that to
life for people.
>> You already to pray?
>> You know I am.
>> It is my attempt to bring the
black south closer to these
plays and to Shakespeare's
language.
Jeffrey: This is the set but
this also feels like home.
>> Yeah.
This edifice here with the doors
very much looks like the house I
grew up in when I was a kid.
Jeffrey: Imes grew up in
Bessemer city, North Carolina,
which he describes as a close
knit, church centered community.
He did not come out as gay until
his 20's.
He began writing in his teens.
A way, he says, to get painful
feelings out of his head.
He would later go on to act in
direct as well.
>> I have heard a guilty
creature sitting at a plate.
Jeffrey: He loves Shakespeare
and said is his -- and so does
his character, juicy.
>> I will have these players
play something like the murder
of my father before my uncle.
Jeffrey: Imes also wanted to
play with the idea of tragedy
itself.
>> I'm going to become so mean
and brutal and awful.
Jeffrey: To ask how he might
break out of cycles of vengeance
and violence.
>> Don't do that.
>> The expectation for black
storytellers is that we will
tell tragedies.
That our existence is tragic.
And I don't know that I agree
with that.
I think that tragedy happens.
And we are living through a sea
of tragedy right now on so many
different levels.
And the thing that has kept me
and sustained me through all of
that.
>> You could stand to be more
honest.
>> Is my ability to make other
people laugh and for people to
make me laugh.
>> You had to think about that
answer.
>> You think you are more
complex than you actually are.
Jeffrey: "Fat hand" is funny,
very funny, including knowing
winks at Shakespeare --
>> The king is dead.
Jeffrey: And pbs.
>> You watch too much pbs.
>> How can walk -- how can one
watch too much pbs?
Jeffrey: There is also the
threat of violence in the demand
that men be ready to take deadly
revenge.
>> You could get hard and mean
and cold, deadly.
>> I don't know if I could do
that.
>> Juicy, being a person who is
very alive in his softness, very
alive in his clearness, -- que
rerness in a plate and up -- in
a place that is not welcoming to
that, I wanted to show people
that even in the midst of this
really cruel and brutal
environment, you can hang on to
the parts of yourself that make
you different.
Make you unique.
Make you special.
>> You weird, juicy.
Jeffrey: Imes has his character
Opal say this directly.
>> What he thinks is your
weakness is going to save you,
juicy.
>> And that has always been
true.
The things about me that people
thought made me weak, have been
the things that have wrought me
to this moment.
I truly believe that.
It took me a long time to accept
my identity.
It took me a long time to be
confident, period.
So I'm hoping the play offers
people the spark to know that
that is the thing that they can
just turn that on for
themselves.
Jeffrey: Does theater have that
power anymore?
>> I think it does.
Theater reinforces the truth
that we are not alone.
Even though everything keeps
telling us that we are.
Jeffrey: An end to cycles of
tragedy, if hamlet can become a
comedy of competence and
survival, than perhaps anything
is possible.
>> I plan on getting into the
cannabis industry.
Jeffrey: If the bard himself
objects --
>> He cannot say much to me now,
which is the great thing about
being able to adapt Shakespeare.
Can't say anything.
Jeffrey: You have the last word
here.
>> I do.
Jeffrey: James Imes pulitzer
prize-winning film -- play runs
through July 3.
For the pbs newshour, I am
Jeffrey brown at the public