Head of Playwriting and Associate Professor James Ijames has been selected to be part of the inaugural cohort of Helen Gurley Brown Lab Fellows at Lincoln Center Theatre. Launched this month, The Helen Gurley Brown Lab Fellows is a new fellowship for playwrights developing new work for the theatre. In addition to Ijames, this first cohort includes Pulitzer and Tony-winner Martyna Majok, Abigail Barlow, Emily Bear, Avery Deutsch, and Ro Reddick.
As fellows, the playwrights will be given space, time, and financial resources to develop work for Lincoln Center Theatre. Dates for these future presentations have yet to be announced. The lab was made possible through a gift of $4.25 million to Lincoln Center Theater from the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation created through the estate of the celebrated former Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief. The funds will be given to the company over the next five years.
James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Award-nominated playwright, director, former actor, and educator. Ijames’s work has been produced by The Public Theater, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, Playwright’s Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, JACK, The National Black Theatre, and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theater, among others. Ijames won the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Artist presented by Theatre Philadelphia. His production of Tarell Alvin Mccraney’s The Brothers Size and Gem of The Ocean, with Simpatico Theatre Company and Arden Theatre respectively, both received Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction. Ijames was a 2015 Pew Fellow for Playwriting. Also in 2015, Ijames’s play WHITE won the Terrance McNally Foundation Award for best new play. Ijames’s play FAT HAM won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and was nominated for Best Play at the 2023 Tonys. Ijames was a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing collective. Wilderness Generation marks a return for Ijmaes to Philadelphia. He served as a Co-Artistic Director for the 2021–22 season of The Wilma Theatre, and was a member of the cast of Lynn Nottage’s Ruined debut at PTC in 2011.
His newest play Welcome Table, directed by Theatre alum Rachel Chavkin '08, will premiere at The Public Theater in February 2027.
