Tarell Alvin McCraney heads up an impressive list of out media professionals that includes Lucky Michaels, Ariel Schrag, Matthew Lew, Rebecca Walker, and Christopher Wheeldon.
Tarell Alvin | McCraney | Playwright | 28 | New York City
Only two years ago, Tarell Alvin McCraney completed the playwriting program at the Yale School of Drama, yet he's not waiting tables, toiling while awaiting a big break. His debut, The Brothers Size, which transplanted an ancient West African myth to modern-day Louisiana, premiered at New York's Public Theater and London's Young Vic in 2007. Other award-winning McCraney plays have tackled everything from Hurricane Katrina to the competitive New York drag circuit. McCraney's "it boy" status in the international theater establishment belies his interest in the stories of those at the margins -- particularly where the LGBT and black worlds intersect, sometimes violently. Obama's ascension, McCraney points out, hasn't eradicated homophobia among blacks or integrated people of color into mainstream gay culture. "Part of my charge is to continuously give voice to the voiceless," he says, noting one obscure story after another -- a transgender woman murdered in Tennessee, a gay man beaten at Morehouse College -- that failed to garner national headlines.
McCraney's new Brother/Sister trilogy will be performed at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., before runs at the Public and Chicago's Steppenwolf; it features a love-starved woman in the projects, two brothers coming to terms with one another, and a semiautobiographical story of a young man coming out in the South. McCraney never loses sight of his unique responsibility, even as a consulting artist-in-residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company. "They didn't ask me to come in and be Shakespeare -- they wanted gay, black, urban Tarell to come in. I try to hold true to what I know the theater can do and the power of it."
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