{"id":98703,"date":"2026-01-28T10:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/98703\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T10:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:33:07","slug":"james-ijames-good-bones-inspired-by-chinatown-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/98703\/","title":{"rendered":"James Ijames \u2018Good Bones\u2019 inspired by Chinatown stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ijames, who <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/philly-playwright-james-ijames-pulitzer-prize\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for \u201cFat Ham,\u201d<\/a> wrote \u201cGood Bones\u201d in 2017, well before the <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/series\/sixers-arena-philadelphia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chinatown debate<\/a> began. But in 2024, he did a major rewrite before its production at The Public Theater in New York City, drawing inspiration from the debate and protests over the Chinatown plan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the original script, it wasn\u2019t a sports complex. It was just a bit of development,\u201d Ijames said. \u201cBecause [Chinatown] was happening and I was seeing all the different sides talk about it, it gave me a deeper understanding of how things like this can reshape a city, a community. It was really kind of kismet that it was happening around the same time that I was doing this big revision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ijames said gentrification debates are ripe for theatrical treatment. In \u201cGood Bones,\u201d he makes the fight personal. The character Aisha is originally from the beleaguered neighborhood and hopes a revitalization will erase her bad memories of growing up there. Earl is opposed to changing his neighborhood despite its deeply entrenched problems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you come back to a place that produced you, what is your responsibility to that place?\u201d Ijames said. \u201cI wanted to dig into that. When you move into a community from outside of it, what is your responsibility to the community that\u2019s extant, that\u2019s indigenous to that place?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ijames, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for \u201cFat Ham,\u201d wrote \u201cGood Bones\u201d in 2017, well before&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22591,12063,21283,69,71,70,48275,48276],"class_list":["post-98703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arden-theatre","tag-chinatown","tag-gentrification","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-theater","tag-sixers-arena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}