Fat Ham by James Ijames Wins the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

James Ijames’s Fat Ham has won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Reimagining Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a queer, Black, southern college kid named Juicy, Fat Ham made its world premiere with Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater in 2021 with a production that was available for streaming online. It is currently making its New York debut at the Public Theater in a co-production with National Black Theatre. Marcel Spears play Juicy.

Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul, about an Afghan woman hiding her translator brother in her Kabul apartment, was named as a finalist. You can read our review of that slow-boil thriller here.

Also named as a finalist was Kristina Wong’s one-woman show about organizing an army of mask-sewing aunties, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord. You can read our review of that show, which we described as, “the most fun you’ll have with Covid all year,” here.