Fat Ham

James Ijames, a Pulitzer Prize winner, takes the bones of Shakespeare's Hamlet and turns them into a play that moves between laughter and grief. Its protagonist is Juicy, a queer college student in the American South who is already working through questions about who he is when his late father's ghost appears in the backyard with a demand: Juicy must avenge the murder.

For Juicy, who knows Hamlet's torments by heart, the request sounds like a script he has already read. What sets the story apart is Juicy himself, a perceptive, self-aware young Black man determined to end the cycles of trauma and violence in his life so he can live freely on his own terms.

The action unfolds at a noisy family cookout, where the play explores love and loss, pain and joy.