Interview: James Ijames Is Determined to Fuel the Artists of the Future

As BroadwayWorld reported last month, The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts has added another Pulitzer Prize-winner to its faculty. Tony-nominated playwright, director and educator James Ijames officially joins the institution as Associate Professor of Theatre this fall.

A founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing  collective, Ijames received a BA in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and an MFA in  Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. James is the recipient of the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist, and two  Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play for The Brothers Size with Simpatico  Theatre Company and Gem of the Ocean with Arden Theatre. Additionally, he is a 2015 Pew  Fellow for Playwriting, the 2015 winner of the Terrance McNally New Play Award for WHITE, the  2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize winner for The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial  of Miz Martha Washington, a recipient of the 2017 Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for  Kill Move Paradise, and 2020 and 2022 Steinberg Prizes. He is a 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama  recipient and a 2023 Tony nominee for Best Play for Fat Ham. 

Just last May, he took the stage at Columbia to inspire the graduates of 2024 (watch his speech in full below). Now, just over a year later, he is checking in with BroadwayWorld as he looks towards the future of the American theatre and how he can make an impact in his new role at Columbia. 

How excited are you to get started in your new gig?

I'm very excited. Running a concentration is so much about thinking about how the curriculum is scaffolding out for these young writers. That's the big thing that I'm like thinking about now. I'm thinking about how the industry has changed in the last five years, so how do we need to be preparing this next generation of writers?  It's very exciting for me! I like formal ambition. I like when plays are difficult. I like plays that have a stylistic, big voice from the writer. So that's the thing that I really want to encourage in this next generation- to  be bold. I'm just beside myself to start having those conversations with these young people who teach me so much. 

How much has teaching and higher education been been a part of your life up to this point? 

I taught in grad school, and then I adjuncted a bit. For most of my career I worked as an actor while I was writing plays on the side. Then in 2014, I joined the faculty of Villanova University. So I've had about 15 years of graduate level teaching at Villanova. I love stepping into this new position because all the things that I've always dreamed about, I can play around with them now. 

What do you expect these like first semesters to look like for you? 

I'm going to be teaching two classes: a rewriting class and a dramatic lit class. I don't want to just be their writing teacher. I also want to like just talk about plays with them. 

The other thing I think that's going to be really big for these early semesters is just watching! I'm going to try to see everybody teach. I want to go to everything, every reading. I want to be as present as possible to learn. Every university has its own unique culture, and it takes a beat to figure those things out. So I have this real luxury of pacing myself as I learn things I want to shift or things that I want to keep the same.

And you have so many people to learn from! The faculty at Columbia is stacked...

You have no idea... I'm so excited. I'm also selfishly like, 'Oh, I get to go and sit and listen to Lynn Nottage teach. Yes! I will do that!' I'm a person that likes to absorb. I go through these phases of just absorbing things. Maybe I'm not writing a ton, but I'm consuming. Out of that comes imagination and expression. I feel like my approach to this is gonna be very similar to that. 

There is a lot going on politically right now that is having a big impact on schools, theatres, and creative people across the country. What kind of advice do you think you'll be giving students in terms of how to be an artist in 2025?

I've been thinking about this a lot. I think that for better or for worse (I hope for better), the potential of something new, of something novel, is really good. I think in addition to the political complexity and upheaval, there's also this technological creep of AI into what writers do and how writers write. I keep coming back to the fact that we do a thing that is live and that liveness is going to become more of a commodity, I think. So how do we capture what I think is going to become people's thirst and quest for things that feel true and honest and real?

Someone is going to read this and roll their eyes so hard... and I'm okay with that because you've gotta have people who are willing to try to imagine what paradise could look like. I don't think I'm going to see it, but I write plays! The thing I do for a living requires me to work on faith and work on imagination. You write a thing that maybe somebody will do. Many plays have never seen the light of day! It's an act of faith. I wrote this thing that now exists whether someone wants it or not. 

So there's something about reminding these writers that they have more power than they think they do because art forces us to remember that we're not by ourselves, we're not alone. So much of what we're going through is because we've been conditioned to think that we should just care about ourselves. We stopped thinking about what the greater good was. I think theater offers people a real space to try that out. You get to practice being a citizen in the theater.

Something that comes up with artists often is the idea of mentorship and how important it is in this industry. How does that make you feel, being in this position of getting to have an impact of the theatre artists of the future?

I'm really grateful for everybody that has mentored me throughout my career, and there's so many people. I was talking to my manager the other day and she was like, "We're the adults now. It's our turn." I can't look up and go, "Who's gonna do that... oh right, it's me!" I think I'm ready. There are things that I believe now. In my 20s, there were things that I thought I knew... but I wasn't sure. I can be of use to someone now.  

What's great about mentorship is that you suddenly find yourself in that relationship.  I've never asked anyone, would you be my mentor? It just kind of materializes. I do feel like now it's my turn to like really show up and do that part for the community. 

Looking at your journey ahead at Columbia, what are you most excited about today?

Meeting those students and hearing their plays and helping them see the writer that they are. I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of that. I am very excited to be in constant relationship with people who write. I'm so honored that I get to do that. 

About Columbia University School of the Arts:

Columbia University School of the Arts awards the Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Theatre,  Visual Arts and Writing, as well as an interdisciplinary program in Sound Art that leads to an MFA  in Visual Arts. The School also offers a Master of Arts degree in Film and Media Studies, as well  as undergraduate majors and summer programs. Our Theatre MFA Program offers  concentrations in Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Dramaturgy, Stage Management, or Theatre  Management & Producing, plus a combined JD/MFA with Columbia Law School, through a joint degree program with Columbia Law School, where students earn both the JD and the MFA in  Theatre Management & Producing through an intensive program. The School of the Arts is a  thriving, diverse community of talented, visionary and Committed Artists from around the world  and a faculty comprised of acclaimed and internationally renowned artists, film and theatre  directors, writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, playwrights, producers, critics and scholars. In  2017, the School opened the Lenfest Center for the Arts, a multi-arts venue designed as a hub  for the presentation and creation of art across disciplines on the University’s new Manhattanville  campus. 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the School’s founding. For more information, visit arts.columbia.edu.