KING JAMES is Coming to Syracuse Stage in February

Syracuse Stage will continue its 2024/2025 season with Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Rajiv Joseph’s “King James,” a slam dunk celebration of basketball, friendship and fandom. Directed by Jamil Jude, “King James” is a co-production with Indiana Repertory Theatre and will run Feb. 26 to March 16 in the Archbold Theatre at Syracuse Stage.

“Sporting events, like theatre, offer that rare opportunity to bring people together, to share common, communal experiences,” said artistic director Robert Hupp. “We invite everyone—sports fans and not so much sports fans—to join us for this amazing new play about friendship: the ups and downs, the complexity and the care that reflects what it means to love something bigger than ourselves, and each other.”

2004. Cleveland. First round draft pick LeBron James is poised to become one of the greats, while two superfans bond over a pair of season tickets and the arrival of “the King” to the Cavaliers’ court. But LeBron has other plans, and his “decision” will transform Matt and Shawn’s friendship into a high-stakes game of shifting loyalties, brutal upsets and the bittersweet thrill of life’s buzzer-beating redemptions. A sharp, unflinching and intimate look at the space that sports occupy in today’s America, Rajiv Joseph's “King James” invites us to find common ground beyond our hometown team while comically measuring the distance between fan and fanatic.

“Sports can bring disparate people together, and yet, the fanaticism of some can further the divides in our world,” said director Jamil Jude. “As an avid sports fan, I fully embrace the ups and downs of being a sports fan—it is as close as one can get to the pathos of live theatre!”

“King James” features Quinn M. Johnson and Enoch King as Matt and Shawn, the two basketball-obsessed Clevelanders brought together under LeBron’s reign. The design team includes star players from previous Syracuse Stage productions, including sets by Czerton Lim (“Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express”) and lighting by Dawn Chiang (“Dial M for Murder”). Making their Syracuse Stage debuts are designers Ari Fulton (costumes) and Mikaela Fraser (sound).

Director Jamil Jude is a highly accomplished director, producer, playwright and dramaturg focused on bringing socially relevant art to the community. He is the Artistic Director at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta and is the Co-Founder of the New Griots Festival which is dedicated to celebrating, advocating and advancing the careers of emerging Black artists in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Jude attended Colgate University where he played football as a cornerback.  

Rajiv Joseph is an award-winning dramatist and screenwriter whose plays include “The North Pool,” “Animals Out of Paper,” “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” “Guards at the Taj,” and “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. “King James” premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and the Center Theatre in Los Angeles in 2022, with Glenn Davis as Shawn and Chris Perfetti (“Abbot Elementary”) as Matt. Directed by Kenny Leon, the production transferred to New York City and played off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2023.

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