Director Note: FAT HAM

4th Wall Theatre Company’s Regional Premiere production of FAT HAM by James Ijames runs from May 1-23, 2026. You can learn more about the show and reserve tickets at this link.

On the first day of rehearsal, I said to the actors, “Let it be a comedy when it needs to be and a drama when it must be.”

Ah, there’s the rub!

On the surface, the premise seems almost a comedic gimmick:

take Hamlet, THE great English language play, and transport it to the backyard barbecue of a Southern Black family with the Hamlet character as a thicc (“with two C’s!”), queer, Black man, throw in karaoke, game playing, and sauce “with undeniable twang,” then see what happens.

What the playwright James Ijames does so well is he lets it be a Hamlet adaptation when it needs to be and a reflection of a young, queer Black, fat person’s growing sense of self as he seeks revenge for the father for whom he has conflicted feelings when it must be.

Ijames tells us that his dramatic ancestors – Wilson, Parks, Baldwin, Kennedy, Hansberry – made it possible for these characters to just be – authentically Black, without the pressure to explain.

One of the joys of working with this cast is that they dove right into these characters’ truths and their archetypes with the assurance Ijames provides.

With that, the ability to ride the wave of the theatrical and real, the profound and honest, and the comedic and dramatic to tell this story has been laid out with sureness, allowing these characters to live fully, richly, and fat.

Derek Charles Livingston
Director of FAT HAM