Tarell Alvin McCraney

2007 Winner in
Drama

Tarell Alvin McCraney is the author of the acclaimed trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays: The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, which have been performed at The Public Theater in New York, Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, the Young Vic in London (Olivier Award nomination), and around the world. Tarrell is also the co-author of the 2016 film Moonlight, based on his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, for which he received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His other plays include Choir Boy (Royal Court, Manhattan Theatre Club), Head of Passes (Steppenwolf), The Breach (Southern Rep, Seattle Rep), Wig Out! (Sundance Theatre Institute, Royal Court, and Vineyard Theatre - GLAAD Award for Outstanding Play), and American Trade (Royal Shakespeare Company/Hampstead Theatre). He is a recipient of a 2007 Whiting Award in Drama, a 2013 MacArthur fellowship, the Steinberg Playwright Award, London's Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, the inaugural New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award, and the inaugural Paula Vogel Playwriting Award. Tarrell is a graduate from the New World School of the Arts High School, the Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, and the Yale School of Drama. He is a Steppenwolf ensemble member, a resident playwright at New Dramatists, a member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects in Miami, and the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

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Reviews & Praise

“McCraney's lush and gorgeous triptych—surely the greatest piece of writing by an American playwright under 30 in a generation or more—smolders. And similarly poetic, arresting, startling lines pop and bubble like the waters of the bayou around which McCraney sets his remarkable plays about the ordinary people of Louisiana—loving, dying, escaping, trying, failing, caring . . . These are a young man's raw, fearless, whimsical plays, written with an intellectual ferocity (and interest in gay themes) that emulates Tony Kushner. They are hipper than anything Wilson ever cared to write. And yet they feel just as true, just as essential.” —Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune [on The Brother/Sister Plays]

“ . . . a work of rare lyricism . . . This is a universal story of triumph, defeat, loss, love, abandonment, compromise, jealousy, infidelity, betrayal and horrific self-sacrifice . . . Mr. McCraney certainly doesn’t look down on the world he writes about. He writes with affection for the people and clearly relishes their language. But he also sympathizes with the limitations of their lives.” —Anita Gates, The New York Times [on In the Red and Brown Water]

“It takes a brave writer to set his language against the plaintive beauty of the hymns and spirituals . . . But McCraney's speech holds its own, locating poetry even in casual vernacular and again demonstrating his gift for simile and metaphor, as when one boy's giggle sounds like ‘two fat ladies amused by cake’ or another's feet smell like ‘baby puke’ and ‘corn chips.’ If there's another playwright as sensitive to the sound of words as to their denotation, you wouldn't know it.” —The Village Voice [on Choir Boy]

Selected Works

Ms. Blakk for President
Premiered in
2019
Antony and Cleopatra
Premiered in
2013
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Outside Links
Playwright: From Page to Stage (PBS Documentary)
Brother/Sister Plays (McCarter)