Production dramaturg Alison Scaramella sat down with playwright and director of  WHITE James Ijames to discuss the play, his process, and what he hopes audiences will take away from their experience with the play.

 

AS: You’ve said that WHITE was largely inspired by a real event, the Donelle Woolford / Joe Scanlan controversy at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. What struck you most about that event, and how did it inform the story you chose to tell?

 

JI: I think I was struck by the audacity. I just was so blown over by the impulse of the project. Like, I understand to a point the desire to be provocative and push boundaries. I get that part of the impulse, but I was just so curious about how it would happen. How could it happen? What were the conversations about it? Who knew what when? And all of this started to from itself into a play. I wanted to consider what the perfect storm of circumstances would be to allow a white man to hire a black performer to impersonate him and get featured in one of the most visible events in the art world. So, the play is my imagining of that with a healthy dose of my own life and experiences being a black person in predominantly white spaces.

 

AS: While WHITE has been performed a number of times professionally, including at Philadelphia-area’s Theater Horizon, this is the first time you have directed it yourself. How does your relationship to a play change when you take on the role of director for your own work?

 

JI: I think I’m more critical of the writing. I’m finding that I want to clarify the language. When I was writing the play initially, I don’t know how much I thought about how it would be realized and now that I’m having to create the embodied version of the script, I’m seeing the places where the play could be better, where the play has aged poorly. And so, I’m actively playing playwright, director, and editor all at once. Which I have to say is very satisfying. I don’t have to explain myself to myself. I can look at a line in the play and say, “You don’t really mean that, you’re being cute, you’re being glib” and then I can, in that moment rewrite that line and then guide the actor in real time to the choice. It feels really collaborative and thrilling!

 

AS: Did you encounter any parallels between the contemporary fine art world and the contemporary theatre world while writing this play? Do you feel like there are parallels in the act of placing monetary value on something as subjective as art and questioning who gets to be the arbiter of its “worth”?

 

JI: I think the parallels are so subtle because theater is ephemeral. It happens and then it goes away and the audience who “consumes” or “possesses” the art in theater are instantly dispersed after the art is completed. And this happens over time, so each night the art is slightly different. Then each person who sees the play brings to it their own life, their own experiences etc. So, the parallels of monetary value between the visual art world and contemporary theatre lies in how we compensate and care for people who are making the art and who gets access to the art whether in terms of price, location, and content. The worth of something is defined in the theatre by a very narrow set of perspectives in the same way that visual art is held by a select few.

 

AS: The play deals in part with the often-problematic relationship between predominantly white institutions and BIPOC artists. The theatre community in particular has undergone quite a reckoning this past year with organizations like We See You, White American Theater leading the charge. Can you talk a little bit about how this play engages with that conversation?

 

JI: I wrote this play in 2014 so if you think about how much has shifted since then this play was almost speculative fiction. The play asks the question, why do people who have the most access, the most privilege, the most power in the world want so desperately to appear to be oppressed? It’s just so strange to me and I see it all the time. I think what I couldn’t have imagined when I wrote the play, is the shift in practice, policy, and systems that the WSYWAT document requests. So, I think at the time I was writing this play to try to appeal to white audiences first. This is a real confession here. I don’t even think I was conscious of just how much I was doing that and that of course is what is so insidious about privileging one set of values, needs, experiences over anything else. So this production is allowing me to refocus this play. I’m much clearer on who I want to be as a writer, and this is in large part because I have done work on my own personal analysis around race and racism. This production will feature a play that has the wisdom I’ve gained since I first wrote it.

 

AS: In a note for Shotgun Players’ production of WHITE back in 2018, you wrote, “Make’m laugh. Make’m cry. Make’m call their senator. But by any means necessary. Make’m do something.” Can you talk a little bit about how this philosophy on theatre, entertainment, and social change manifests in WHITE?

 

JI: Well, I hope it’s funny. But I also hope it unsettles and disorients people. When you shake up people's assumptions you can get a whole group of people to see things with new eyes. And I personally like to do that with humor and pathos. If you can make people feel something you can make them do something. We saw that in the summer of 2020. Whole systems changed.

 

AS: WHITE will be opening the Villanova Theatre season and welcoming back our audiences to live, in-person theatre. What about this play made it feel like the right choice to start our season after such a difficult year? What do you hope our audiences will take from their experience with the play?

 

JI: I hope the audience will consider where they can make a little room for someone they perhaps have been ignoring. I want the audience to think about the places in their life where they are causing harm or even oppressing someone. And then I hope the play will make them change. Plays affect individuals which feels insignificant, however individuals vote, they consume, they can make a difference in the lives of the people around them and that’s the power of theater.