King James

King James is a play written by Rajiv Joseph, which premiered in March 2022 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, under the direction of Kenny Leon. The play's action is launched when two characters meet: Matt (Chris Perfetti), a Cleveland bartender with Cavaliers tickets he needs to sell, and Shawn (Glenn Davis), a writer who has recently published a short story and wants to buy tickets for the Cleveland Cavaliers 2003–2004 season – the first season with LeBron James playing. Development Rajiv Joseph began to write the play in 2017, motivated to "preserve some of the experience of following and cheering" for LeBron James. "Rajiv's first draft had a lot of basketball in it," according to Glenn Davis, who is a long-term friend of Rajiv Joseph, but "as each new draft came in, the specifics about basketball began to disappear because Rajiv wanted to make sure this play was about friendship." The play, a co-production of the Steppenwolf and the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles was originally scheduled for production during their 2019–2020 seasons. The premiere was delayed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, until March 13, 2022 in Chicago and June 1, 2022 in Los Angeles. Rajiv Joseph, Glenn Davis and Kenny Leon, who is directing at Steppenwolf for the first time, are all longtime basketball aficionados, but not so much for Chris Perfetti. This added depth to the play's development at Steppenwolf as being both about and not about basketball – about how sports helps to bring people together. As Rajiv Joseph said to Sarah Bahr of the New York Times: "Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them." Synopsis The play's drama derives from the ups and downs of Matt's and Shawn's friendship, the ebbs and flows of their two careers, and the comings and goings of LeBron James. The play's four scenes take place at the time of Matt's and Shawn's initial meeting during the 2003–2004 season, six and one half years later at the time of "The Decision", when James announced he was abandoning Cleveland for Miami, in 2014, when James returned to Cleveland, and in 2016, the end of Cleveland's championship drought.