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In a new play, a writer tackles a touchy topic: Black class conflict

‘Good Bones,’ James Ijames’s seriocomedy about the tensions gentrification can set off in the Black community, gets a world premiere at Studio Theatre

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May 22, 2023 at 2:07 p.m. EDT
From left, Cara Ricketts, Joel Ashur and Johnny Ramey in James Ijames's “Good Bones,” which had its world premiere at D.C.'s Studio Theatre this month. (Margot Schulman)
7 min

As he walked the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., on a visit some time ago, it occurred to James Ijames, a 2022 Pulitzer winner for “Fat Ham,” that there was a new play practically tapping on his shoulder.

“The historical class struggle is still very much with us,” the dramatist said in a recent interview. “And there are people who, and I count myself in this category, Black people who attain a certain level of affluence — if you’re not careful, it’s very easy to lose sight of where we’ve been, what we’ve been through, what the cost was.”

The contemplation of a problematic class divide propelled Ijames, whose “Fat Ham” is now Tony-nominated and running on Broadway, onto the path of his latest comedy-drama. “Good Bones,” the story of a rich Black couple who move onto a redeveloped city block, unprepared for the bad karma they instigate, is getting a vibrant world premiere at Studio Theatre. A four-person cast directed by Psalmayene 24 deftly animates a plot that feels so much of the moment it could have gone viral on a news site rather than live to the stage. A noisy, late-night block party prompts a complaint to police that causes more troubling consequences than the couple anticipated.

Studio’s artistic director, David Muse, asked the 42-year-old Ijames (pronounced IMES) for a new play several years ago, before “Fat Ham” made him a hot writer; his success led to his recent decision to leave Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, where he was one of its trio of artistic directors. Although only one out of four plays that Studio commissions ultimately gets produced by the company, Muse was not surprised when Ijames’s made the cut.

“I could just tell that this was a guy with a theatrical imagination and felt like he had something to say,” Muse said. “Writing a play about gentrification in which all the characters are Black: It’s such a simple and brilliant idea.”

To Psalmayene 24, a D.C.-based director and playwright who goes by “Psalm,” Ijames has in “Good Bones” not just a sharp concept but also a platform for a deeper exploration of identity than we’re accustomed to. “One of the beautiful aspects of this play is that it gives us a nuanced view into Blackness as well,” Psalm said. “These are characters who will seem familiar, but we haven’t quite seen these takes on these types of characters before. And I think what it does is it subtly or not so subtly shatters certain stereotypical images of the African American experience.”

That intention comes through even in works that hew closer to magic realism, such as “Fat Ham.” Set in North Carolina, where Ijames grew up, the play takes place in the backyard of a suburban Black family, where a farcical modern-day riff on “Hamlet” unfolds. The Shakespearean parallels extend to the appearance of a dead patriarch popping out of a barbecue grill to demand his son avenge his murder.

“Fat Ham,” to be staged by Taylor Reynolds at Studio in October, seems destined to be produced everywhere. The comedy’s success is a gratifying milestone for a playwright from Bessemer City, N.C., a community of about 5,500 outside Charlotte, who started out as an actor and had an affinity for language.

“I learned by reading plays, by kind of writing plays that were really bad for a really long time until they got a little better,” Ijames said. “And then they got pretty good. And I think I’m still kind of in the ‘pretty good’ phase.”

He’s “always on the hunt,” he said, for conversations he can use. “I like to listen to the way that people speak. When I was riding the bus in Philly, I used to love putting ear buds in and not listening to anything on them, so that I could eavesdrop. Because it’s amazing what people say on public transport. Amazing, the things you can hear!”

The outsize personalities who fill his plays are fictional essences of those who surrounded him in childhood. “I grew up in a big family with big characters. They’re larger-than-life people,” he said. “I love when I’m watching something, and the turn of phrase is just so unique and surprising. I love that so much, because so much of my life, I grew up with people who spoke in very musical ways, used language in these really like, flowery ways. I think about my grandfather praying, and the way he prayed, it sounded like the King James Bible.”

His grandmother, a deaconess in the church the family attended, was in charge of the annual Christmas play. When Ijames was 15, he recalled, she said: “‘You’re going to write the script for this.’ And I did. And I think I was in it, too.”

He hemmed and hawed when I asked what it was about — “I was playing with the form!” he protested — then finally fessed up. “It was about this kid who … is on the wrong side of the tracks, but then he gets better, and then he comes to church, and everything’s great.”

That sunny denouement, actually, is not out of step with the emotional pitch of plays Ijames would write decades later. Take “Fat Ham”: It may be inspired by a classical tragedy, but that does not mean it has to end like one. “The script says that the play cracks open into a celebration of the feminine,” the playwright said, adding that how a director and cast interpret that is up to them. “And that’s enough space for someone like Saheem Ali,” director of the Broadway “Fat Ham,” “to walk up to that script and go, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve got.’” (What Ali does with the ending, in concert with actor Calvin Leon Smith, is indeed fabulous.)

Ijames says his role models are writers such as Lynn Nottage, whose plays range wildly in style and theme, including satire and social realism. The remark is borne out by “Good Bones,” which owes more to August Wilson, and perhaps Lorraine Hansberry, than to William Shakespeare. Cara Ricketts and Joel Ashur bring urbane magnetism to Aisha and Travis, a couple emblematic of the upscale influx: She’s a (pregnant) urban planner; he’s chef-owner of a chichi haven of modern Southern cooking. (“Down-home tapas,” he calls it.)

Their house once belonged to a neighborhood legend, Sister Bernice, and in the eyes of Johnny Ramey’s Earl, a contractor and lifelong resident, the homeowners are interlopers (even though he helps them renovate the historic homestead). Though the city is never specified, D.C. certainly fits, as Ijames lucidly diagrams the social tensions. The struggle here is over how much harm is inflicted by an affluent Black couple when they crowd out poorer Black people who have a “richer” claim on local culture and history.

The play itself is an enriching experience, a demonstration of Ijames’s dexterity with a conventional, well-made play. In Psalm’s staging on Misha Kachman’s pleasing rendition of a remodeled kitchen, the performances are all well-etched — particularly Ramey’s charismatic provocateur of an Earl. (Deidre Staples is excellent as Earl’s younger sister, Carmen.) The scenes unfold with the rewarding worry that, at any moment, events may spin irretrievably out of control. But Ijames is less interested here in explosions than in how communities can change and still hold together — if newcomers with newfound power honor the values of those who have been there all along.

For his part, Ijames said he’s not convinced that he’s written his best plays yet. “I’m hoping,” he said, “that they’ll be great one day.” They’re pretty good now.

Good Bones, by James Ijames. Directed by Psalmayene 24. Set, Misha Kachman; costumes, Moyenda Kulemeka; lighting, William K. D’Eugenio; sound, Megumi Katayama. About 100 minutes. Through June 18 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. studiotheatre.org.