Philly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames hopes a Philly-first theater marketing experiment works. Three theaters, all clients of a single marketing firm, have united to offer a Citywide subscription to see three of Ijames’ plays – three plays, three different theaters, one pass.
The first play begins this month at the Arden Theatre Co. “Good Bones” runs Jan. 22 through March 8. Next is “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington” at the Wilma Theater March 17 through April 5. The last, “Wilderness Generation,” is a world premiere at the Philadelphia Theatre Co. from April 10 through May 3.
“I thought it was really cool,” Ijames said about The Citywide James Ijames Pass, which sells for $130 and includes parking discounts and a signature Ijames yellow beanie.
“I’m always a little anxious when I’m the face of something,” he said. “But I liked the idea of the theaters working together. I think more and more theaters should be doing [similar projects], trying to pool their resources, trying to get their audiences grafted on to each other.”
The Ijames trifecta was strictly coincidental, but the folks at En Route Marketing, a city business that represents all three theaters, noticed.
It seemed like an opportunity for some kind of promotion, but what?
En Route staffers envisioned, then discarded, a Hollywood red-carpet-style publicity event. Good for photos, but their clients had a different goal. “We needed to make sure we’re bringing butts to seats,” said Billy Cook, one of the En Route public relations crew. “It had to result in people coming to see the shows.”
Eventually the Citywide idea emerged.
“When I saw it, I was definitely intrigued,” said Jason Lindner, a nonprofit marketing professional and board president of Theatre Philadelphia, the umbrella theater marketing organization that sponsors the Barrymore Awards, Philly’s version of the Oscars.
“I haven’t seen anything that centered on an artist,” he said. “One of the things a marketing person wants to do is to create an event that’s outside the publicizing of an [individual] show. Anything that involves multidisciplinary always catches the eye.”
But there were logistical problems. Each theater had its own ticket-selling apparatus, so how could any of them sell tickets to another theater? Who would offer the tickets and how could ticket buyers pay for them?
The answer was TKTS Philly, the last-minute discount ticket-selling organization imported from New York in 2024. It had the ability to manage ticket sales to multiple venues, both online and in-person. Housed in the Independence Visitor Center at 6th and Market streets, TKTS is readily available to tourists and locals.
The Philadelphia Visitor Center Corp,, the nonprofit which operates the Independence Visitor Center, cooperates with Philadelphia tourism agencies who are looking for any way to promote the city, including as a theater destination.
Whether the Ijames Citywide experiment succeeds depends on marketing. As of early December, 50 subscriptions had been sold, according to Michael Hogue, director of marketing and communications at the Arden, who was encouraged by the number.
At that point, none of the three theaters had links to the Citywide easily obvious on their websites. Nor did Theatre Philadelphia.
Hogue said that Arden promotes the Citywide via social media. He’s hoping for 100 subscriptions and expects sales will pick up near or during the first play’s run at the Arden.
The easiest way to find the tickets is through the Philadelphia Visitor Center website, searching for Ijames.
The playwright said he’s happy that the Citywide is happening in the city that has impacted his career.
These days Ijames lives mostly in New York. He still has a house in Philadelphia, though, which is where he lived when his play, “Fat Ham,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. (At the time, he was one of three co-artistic directors at the Wilma Theater.)
Theatergoers will have the rare opportunity to watch Ijames’ work evolve.
“It really looks at me at the beginning of my career, at the middle of my career and one where I’m headed at now. It’s rare for a playwright to get to do that at any point in their career,” Ijames said.
So, what will Citywide pass holders see?
First up is “Good Bones,” a mid-career work at the Arden, starting in January. The play description begins, “A new sports stadium is being built in the middle of a neighborhood.” If it sounds familiar, it really isn’t. Because even if it appears that Ijames drew inspiration from the failed Sixers plan to build a stadium next to Chinatown, he actually began writing the play much earlier, in 2016.
Ijames said he extensively rewrote “Good Bones” prior to its fall 2024 run at The Public Theater in New York. During rehearsals, Ijames remembers telling the crew, “This is literally happening down the street in Philadelphia. It was weirdly imprinted on this production while I was rewriting it.”
Next is one of Ijames’ earliest plays, “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,” at the Wilma, starting in March. Ijames describes it as his first professional production. It’s based on a historical fact – that President George Washington had promised to free his enslaved people after his wife, Martha Washington, died.
“She was afraid they would kill her,” Ijames said. “Martha has a fever dream, and she is surrounded by people who have served them her entire life. She’s unsure, she’s afraid,” he said. She, and, by extension, the audience are asked to reckon with the nation’s founding ideals – what they meant then and what they mean now.
Last is a world premiere, “Wilderness Generation,” about five cousins, at the PTC starting in April.
“This is a play I’ve been working on for a year and half,” Ijames said. Part of the inspiration comes from his own family. His grandmother, in her 90s, is the matriarch who unites the cousins, aunts and uncles. But how do families continue when the elders pass?
Ijames said he specifically wanted to work with PTC’s co-artistic directors Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar, whom he knew before they came to the PTC several years ago. Magar will direct “Wilderness.”
“They are very led by the writer,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of pressure on what they want from the production. They question to see if the decisions they are making is supporting the thing that I’m trying to do.”
Ijames has another innovative partnership in the works. He was recently commissioned to create a new stage adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God by the Arden Theatre Company in partnership with Orlando Shakes and the University of Central Florida. They will develop the production together and co-premiere the result in Florida and Philly. Details, including performance dates, are not yet available.
