Tony-Nominated Play Introduces Brandon Foxworth to Pittsburgh
By SHARON EBERSON
Brandon Foxworth’s path to City Theatre and the lead role in Fat Ham was a matter of happenstance, plus a whole lot of perseverance and faith.
The Detroit native, actor and ordained minister was between jobs and helping out his grandmother in Atlanta, when he checked out the job listings on Playbill.com. An audition notice for roles in Pittsburgh, a place he had never been, caught his eye:
City Theatre, in a co-production with TheaterSquared of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was casting the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony-nominated Fat Ham. The show runs March 2-24, 2024, on City’s Mainstage.
Foxworth picks up the story from there.
“I tried to self-submit, but the link on the website wasn’t exactly working. I think you needed your agent to do it,” he recalled. “So I said, ‘Well, you know what, God? I’m just going to go ahead and email them myself. At the time I had blonde hair – I was trying out something new – so I emailed them a picture of me and my blonde hair saying, ‘This is my inspiration, if I were to play Juicy.’ ”
Juicy by any other name might be Hamlet, in playwright James Ijames’ reimagining of the Shakespeare masterwork. In Fat Ham, however, the protagonist is a queer Black man, sensitive, self-aware and snarky, who attends an online college with the hope of landing a job in human resources.
The Pulitzer website describes Fat Ham as “a funny, poignant play that deftly transposes Hamlet to a family barbecue in the American South, to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility and honesty.”
Back to the other story, in which Foxworth sent his “regular” headshot and resume, with the note, “I understand if you don’t take self-submissions, but I would just love the chance to audition.”
“By the grace of God,” he said, the audition was granted, and the callback came on a day Foxworth will never forget.
“In this play, Juicy has a lot of conversations with his father that has passed, and the callback notice is sent to me on October 5, the anniversary of my father’s passing. And so it was just like, ‘Okay, God. Wow.’ And so I prepared that callback, and here I am,” Foxworth said.
He was talking by phone, from the rehearsal space on the South Side, which he now shares with castmates who boast deep Pittsburgh ties.
Director Monteze Freeland, City’s co-artistic director, is at the helm of Fat Ham, with performers including Maria Becoates-Bey and Linda Haston, along with Khalil Kain (Pipeline and Clyde’s at City Theatre), Elexa Hanner, LaTrea Rembert and Jordan Williams. Becoates-Bey was a Post-Gazette Performer of the Year for her work in the 1994-95 season, including Spunk at City Theatre.
All were previously unknown to Foxworth, although he quickly felt as if he was surrounded “by neighbors and cousins from back in Michigan.” Among the perks of being in Pittsburgh, he said, are the food options, as well as the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of August Wilson – Foxworth played Bono in a Lyric Rep (Utah) production of Wilson’s Fences.
As he explains all this in great detail, Foxworth’s enthusiasm is contagious. Even over the phone at 10 a.m., the sound of his “Hello!” can light up the room.
Asked how being a minister informs his acting, Foxworth says with a laugh that he will try to give me the SparkNotes version of how he got from there to here.
It begins with Foxworth as a closeted teenager, who had begun doing sermons at his church’s “youth day,” and eventually being given the greenlight to form a more regular Bible study group, with the stipulation that “every child from ages 4 up to where I was, at 17, was able to say what they learned.” Foxworth also had begun doing theater at the time, and both earned him recognition as a leader and communicator.
“I learned that my ministry is that of loving folks,” he said. “Whatever gift that God has given me, whether it’s my smile or whether it is my creative abilities, that is a chance to allow myself to be a vessel. Acting in theater is a very spiritual practice. You have to allow a character to take over your vessel.”
He marvels at some of the signs that have led up to big opportunities, such as the role of Nurse Hector opposite Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, in the 2022 movie Moving On.
“My goodness. Amazing!,” he said of the experience. “And I’ll just tell you something funny real quick.” Or as quickly as he can, as someone who pays attention to details.
As an undergrad student in Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, he went to movies at the retro-fitted Alamo Drafthouse. There, he saw a mannequin of Fonda as Barbarella, circa 1968.
“I loved her in Monster-in-Law, and I was like, ‘That’s Jane Fonda?’ And I remember I said back then, I would love to act with her, but it probably won’t happen. At that time, Jane was getting into her 70s. … And five or so years later, there it is that I get to act with her and with Lily Tomlin – and Lily is from Detroit, and went to my high school way back in the day.”
Working alongside the veteran actors was a master class for an actor on his first movie set.
“It was just like, wow, what a way to be a student … to soak them up. I learned so much from them, and they were so kind.”
The role of Juicy in Fat Ham hits close to home for Foxworth. It also was a reminder that growing up, it was rare that he was exposed to books or media that spoke to his own experience.
“But,” he said, “there comes a time where certain forms of literature come across my path that I can deeply relate to, and it takes me to a place and just reading it, it heals me.”
The way Ijames has reworked the Hamlet story, as a Black family populated with individuals, each dealing with their own issues, speaks to Foxworth.
He likens it to his favorite movie, the Oscar-winning Moonlight – a coming-of-age tale about sexual identity, masculinity and the community that supports him on his journey.
“I laughed, I cried, and I kept saying, ‘How does this person know my life?’ It was the same as when I watched the [Oscar-winning] movie Moonlight. … I can watch Wesley Snipes do his action thing and Denzel do his thing, even Viola Davis. But when it comes to things like, ‘Where it is the Black queer experience?,’ It isn’t the usual story that we’re used to. … We’re not a monolith as Black people, as Black queer people, as people who are under the LGBTQIA umbrella. There is so much to us.”
In addition, the role of Juicy calls for someone who is “plus size, and I was like, oh, when I do this audition, I don’t have to suck in my stomach,” he said with that infectious laugh.
The minister in Foxworth has more to say about why the story of Juicy isn’t just relatable to him, but has universal appeal, in the same way that people have related to Hamlet’s tribulations for more than 400 years.
There are direct connections to Shakespeare’s play, in both plot and a few quotes, but it also strays afar, not the least of which is in length (about 95 minutes with no intermission) and language.
““This play, I believe, is just spectacular. And I believe that it really does have the power to heal and to liberate folks,” Foxworth said. “And so I just pray that those who come, that they open up themselves and that they allow the messages to come, and that no matter if it’s uncomfortable or not, that they feel liberated by it.”
AMERICA’S MOST PRODUCED PLAYS
James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winner Fat Ham swiftly went from a five-time Tony nominee in 2023 to a Top 10 most-produced play in the USA that same year. City Theatre continues the dramedy’s roll in the regions, March 2-24, 2024.
City Theatre earlier this season produced Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means To Me, the most produced play in America in the 2023-24 season, and August Wilson remained one of our most produced playwrights, at No. 4, behind Lynn Nottage (Clyde’s), Ken Ludwig (adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Sherlock Holmes stories) and Schreck.
The survey includes 1,560 productions from the 558 nonprofit theaters that are members of the Theater Communication Group, plus Broadway, and doesn’t count faithful Shakespeare productions or A Christmas Carol, which are always the most popular titles by far in the U.S.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Fat Ham is on City Theatre’s Mainstage, 1300 Bingham St., South Side, March 2-24, 2024. Tickets: visit https://citytheatrecompany.org/play/fat-ham/ or call 412-431-CITY (2489). Note: For Fat Ham, City Theatre will collaborate with community organizations including Alumni Theater Company, True T Pittsburgh, Steel Smiling and 1Hood Media.
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