“We Tragic,” Juicy announces after his family comically fails to fulfill the play’s fate, as a Hamlet adaptation, to leave the stage strewn with corpses. But unlike Shakespeare’s hero, whose shadow stretches over much of how we understand modern selfhood and motivation, Juicy finds ways of sharing his grief and alienation with his family, such that together they are capable of critiquing the violent, patriarchal ghosts that continue to haunt modern tragedy. Instead of secret schemes, we find intimacy. Instead of bloodshed, we find celebration. Instead of “I am tragic,” we get togetherness in life’s setbacks: “We Tragic.” This essay discusses how Fat Ham alters the story of the tragic protagonist defined by self-alienation, individualist solipsism, and inescapable violence. Across Ijames’ plays, the tragic finds relief is in the shared performances and experiences of community formation. I connect Ijames’ experimental tragic structures in Fat Ham to his meditations on Black victimhood in his 2019 play, Kill Move Paradise. When read together, these plays show an overarching concern with how tragic plot structures create alienated tragic individuals stuck in violent repetitions.

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“We Tragic”: Tragic Individuals and Community in Fat Ham and Kill Move Paradise

  • Sara Sanchez-Zweig

摘要

“We Tragic,” Juicy announces after his family comically fails to fulfill the play’s fate, as a Hamlet adaptation, to leave the stage strewn with corpses. But unlike Shakespeare’s hero, whose shadow stretches over much of how we understand modern selfhood and motivation, Juicy finds ways of sharing his grief and alienation with his family, such that together they are capable of critiquing the violent, patriarchal ghosts that continue to haunt modern tragedy. Instead of secret schemes, we find intimacy. Instead of bloodshed, we find celebration. Instead of “I am tragic,” we get togetherness in life’s setbacks: “We Tragic.” This essay discusses how Fat Ham alters the story of the tragic protagonist defined by self-alienation, individualist solipsism, and inescapable violence. Across Ijames’ plays, the tragic finds relief is in the shared performances and experiences of community formation. I connect Ijames’ experimental tragic structures in Fat Ham to his meditations on Black victimhood in his 2019 play, Kill Move Paradise. When read together, these plays show an overarching concern with how tragic plot structures create alienated tragic individuals stuck in violent repetitions.