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Tarell Alvin McCraney Debuts "Head of Passes" at Chicago's Steppenwolf

Brilliant. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney debuts a world premiere play at Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre tonight: "Head of Passes."

The play recasts the biblical Book of Job "in Louisiana with Job as a woman whose birthday party is derailed when a hurricane strikes and family secrets come to light," reports the Chicago Tribune's RedEye. It was developed through the Joyce Awards, which provide $50,000 "grants to support new works by artists of color."

McCraney talks to RedEye about faith, sexuality and growing up in Black church:

"My grandparents were kind of shocked [after I was baptized at age six] but also relieved because I exhibited some homosexual tendencies very early. I think that made them nervous.

"But I also was a quick reader, a quick study, so intellectually, they kind of put me in this place—I think this happens in the black community often—which is, 'This very smart and ambitious but somehow effeminate young man is getting into church and starting to love what church has to offer. Let's push him in that direction so he becomes a pastor, so that he'll use God to deflect whatever other demons he's got to fight with.' Which is good, 'cause in life, I've needed that faith for many things. I'm so glad to have had it. It just didn't keep away the homosexuality [laughs]."

Philadelphia native Quiara Alegria Hudes also debuts The Happiest Song Plays Last tonight at the Goodman Theatre. Qudes is "also a 2009 Joyce Award-winner who wrote the script for Tony Award-winning musical, In the Heights, and went on to win the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Water by the Spoonful."

The 33-year-old McCraney has sometimes been described as the "heir" to August Wilson's legacy. McCraney is a Miami native and graduated from Yale '07 MFA. The wunderkind dramatist became one of the first winners of Yale University's new Windham Campbell Prize earlier. That award has a $150,000 cash tag and has been described as "one of the largest literary prizes in the world."

McCraney's is best known for his acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays. Other works include Wig Out!, American Trade and Choir Boy. The latter made its London debut in September 2012 and explores the competing roles of religion, Black cultural identity and sexual repression at a fictional African-American prep school.

Get it Tarell!

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McCraney Awarded $150,000 from Yale University
McCraney's "Choir Boy" Premieres in London
McCraney Brings "American Trade" to London
Tarell Alvin McCraney Joins Steppenwolf

Tarell Alvin McCraney Awarded $150,000 from Yale University

This is absolutely brilliant. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney has become one of the first winners of Yale University's new Windham Campbell Prize, reports the Yale Alumni Magazine. It's accompanied by a hefty cash tag.

Calling it "one of the largest literary prizes in the world," the university this morning announced nine writers who will receive $150,000 each "for outstanding achievement in fiction, nonfiction and drama." The prize, totaling $1.35 million this year, was established in 2011 and is named for the late author Donald Windham and his partner, Sandy M. Campbell. This year's winners will receive their prizes at Yale in September, in conjunction with a literary festival.

The 33-year-old McCraney, who is gay, has sometimes been described as the "heir" to August Wilson's legacy. McCraney is a Miami native and graduated from Yale '07 MFA. The wunderkind dramatist has had a very busy year, reports Miami's New Times.

The Miami native playwright kicked off 2013 with his own punched-up, truncated version of Hamlet, which opened at GableStage in January to favorable reviews (including ours). Next, he's working with London's Royal Shakespeare Company and the New York Public Theatre to produce another major production at GableStage in 2014.

McCraney's is best known for his acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays. Other works include Wig Out!, American Trade and Choir Boy. The latter made its London debut in September 2012 and explores the competing roles of religion, Black cultural identity and sexual repression at a fictional African-American prep school.

Get it Tarell!

You May Enjoy:
McCraney's "Choir Boy" Premieres in London
McCraney Brings "American Trade" to London
Tarell Alvin McCraney Joins Steppenwolf

THEATER: Tarell Alvin McCraney's "Choir Boy" Premieres in London

Catching up with the brilliance of Tarell Alvin McCraney, the 31-year-old gay playwright sometimes described as the "heir" to August Wilson's legacy ...

McCraney's newest production has just made its London debut. Choir Boy explores the competing roles of religion, Black cultural identity and sexual repression at a fictional  African-American prep. The one-act play is directed by Dominic Cooke and runs through October 6 at the Royal Court Theatre. The London run has already been sold out.

Variety describes the production as "intellectually and emotionally riveting as it is authentic."

Expert musical direction by Charles Vassell has turned a strikingly young group of actors into a convincing, cohesive vocal quartet whose a capella harmonies are laced in and out of the action. Their deft singing effortlessly represents the choir as the school's long-established pride and joy which, in the school's anniversary year, is crucial since it acts as a funding magnet.

Problematically, however, the highly articulate and gifted choir leader Pharus (Dominic Smith) is seriously effeminate. Whether or not he is actually gay in initially unclear but facts don't bother his fellow singers, who have already made their minds up, notably Bobby (Eric Kofi Abrefa) who verbally abuses him whenever he can get away with it.

Bobby feels unusually safe in his discriminatory attitude because he happens to be the nephew of the headmaster (Gary McDonald). The latter is presented as a man caught between duty to his pupils' wider education, the importance (or tyranny) of tradition and the need to toe the line with parents.

Photographer Elliott Franks uploaded a gallery of images from opening night HERE..

Dominic Smith, who plays the lead character Pharus, is a former Britain’s Got Talent contestant. Choir Boy is scheduled to make its New York premiere in June 2013.

The Guardian and The Stage have published generally upbeat reviews. On the other hand, The Telegraph found the production uneven, the dialogue "plodding" and notes, "[T]he five principal pupils are only fully expressive when they break into song."

McCraney offers more perspective in an interview with Metro. "All my plays are in some ways coming-out plays," he says.

Although it doesn’t feature suicide, it was inspired by the phenomenon of adolescent tragedies in the US in 2010, mainly involving boys bullied over their sexuality. "Every kid plays around with these thoughts but these students honestly thought there was absolutely nothing for them," he says. "I really wanted to get at how the world is so small for you at that age and yet it feels like it’s everything."

The wunderkind's most recent work was "American Trade", which he wrote during his stint as writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The plot explored hustlers, hip-hop and homophobia.

McCraney's critically-acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays were recently produced at two of London's most prestigious stages—The Young Vic in 2007 at the Royal Court in 2009. The first play in the cycle, The Brothers Size, is currently in performance in San Francisco and Charlotte.

PHOTOS: 2011 Esteem Awards Celebrates Black LGBT Pride

PHOTOS: Rod McCullom

The 2011 Esteem Awards were held in Chicago over Black Pride Weekend. The event was the fifth annual celebration sponsored by PrideIndex.com.

This year's honorees included Emil Wilbekin, playwright Tarrell Alvin McCraney, Chicago's Howard Brown Health Center CEO Jamal Edwards, HIV/AIDS educator and prevention leader Curtis Lipscomb,  author and photographer Michael-Christopher, filmmaker Mary Morten, transgender activists Monica Roberts and Joy Morris, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell and many others. Rod 2.0 was honored in 2008.

"I created the Esteem Awards as my own special way to honor individuals and organizations in the African American and LGBT community," Esteem Awards founder Philip Esteem tells R20.

It was a beautiful ceremony. Such a pleasure to spend time with so many inspiring people. The ceremony includes performances by poet Yolo Akili and Love the Poet.

Some images from the event are HERE.

THEATER: Tarell Alvin McCraney Brings "American Trade" to London

Catching up with the brilliance of Tarell Alvin McCraney, the 30-year-old gay playwright sometimes described as the "heir" to August Wilson's legacy. The wunderkind's latest work is "American Trade", which he wrote during his stint as writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Hustlers, hip-hop and homophobia, he explains in a lengthy profile at the London Evening Standard.

It is, he says, "the story of an American hustler who comes to set up shop in London - and the hilarity that ensues". He has explained in the past that "my plays are about what people use to build a life on when they don't have many options". Is the hustler at the heart of this play, Pharus, chancing and charming through life from lucky break to lucky break, like him?

When I ask, McCraney smiles, but it's a small smile, looking to the side. Then he says carefully, "Pharus is somebody trying to avoid attachments - to stay naked of all the things in life that accumulate around you. I grew up in a situation where I knew not to hold anything too hard, because nothing is really yours. You have to try to be yourself, your vulnerable self, without making any attachments or any expectations. The more we attach onto those things the more they disappoint us."

In American Trade, directed by Jamie Lloyd, he teases out one way in which his identities can collide and clash. A congressman launches an investigation into homophobia in hip hop and reggae. McCraney grew up loving this music - but also being repulsed and frightened by the homophobia that saturates it. He turns even more soft-spoken when he recalls first hearing the reggae hits Boom Bah Bah to the Batty Boy and Burn De Chi Chi Man.

"That is saying, 'I'm going to shoot a gay man in the head', 'burn the chi chi man down'. These were the songs that were ringing down my block. And people were dancing to it and screaming to it and jumping up and down. Those cries, that shouting and celebrating. I mean, the day I heard that song in my neighbourhood, I had to be like 11 years old. It came on the radio and scared me so much, I almost cried. But I couldn't cry because I thought that maybe someone would know I was gay."

It's unthinkable, he says, that we would passively tolerate music that incited hatred against black people in this way. "I get very angry about it," he says. "Buju Banton just went to jail. People are saying, 'Free Buju Banton! He's such a beautiful, wise man'. Yeah, who wants to burn gay people and blow up their heads."

Read the full profile at the London Evening Standard. It's very engaging. McCraney discusses growing up in poverty and as the son of a drug-addicted mother who later died of AIDS.

Last year, McCraney became a member of the prestigious Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre Company. McCraney's critically-acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays were performed last year at the theater and at two of London's most prestigious stages—The Young Vic in 2007 at the Royal Court in 2009.

"American Trade" opens at the Hampstead Theatre in London on June 2.

In February, the RSC released a video where McCraney explains the creative process behind "American Trade." Watch it AFTER THE JUMP ...

THEATER: Tarell Alvin McCraney Joins Chicago's Steppenwolf

Tarell Alvin McCraney is all over the news. The 29-year-old gay playwright sometimes described as the "heir" to August Wilson's legacy has just become a member of the prestigious Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre Company. McCraney is also featured in several news profiles this week.

McCraney's critically-acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays are currently in performance at the theater. Steppenwolf has also commissioned McCraney to write a new play based on the biblical book of Job, reports TheaterMania. The Brother/Sister trilogy transplants an ancient Yoruba mythology to the modern-day Louisiana and Hurricane Katrina. It premiered at New York's Public Theater—"Too good to be perfect," raved the New York Times"—and London's Young Vic in 2007.

Today: The new issue of New York City's NEXT profiles McCraney as one of theater's new generation of stars:

"McCraney’s experiences as a gay black man are the core of his award-winning shows, most notably last year’s Paris-Is-Burning-as-a-Greek-tragedy, Wig Out!, and this year’s Brother/Sister  trilogy. The latter, rumored as a contender for this year’s Pulitzer, has made the Yale School of Drama grad a rising star in the theater. McCraney has also given gay theater some much-welcomed diversity."

On Wednesday: The Detroit News profiled the growing number of black playwrights who, like McCraney, are seeing their work produced by "mainstream, traditionally white theater companies." The newspaper favorably compared the "young, emergent star" to the late August Wilson:

"Like Wilson, the Miami-born McCraney writes about ordinary black people, their hopes and struggles and, above all, their sense of community and the spiritualist legacy that winds back to Africa. But McCraney also parts from Wilson in mirroring his own experiences as a young black, gay man."

Said McCraney when he was named one of The Advocate's "40 Under 40": "I try to hold true to what I know the theater can do and the power of it."

Watch scenes from the Brother/Sister plays and McCraney discuss his work WHEN YOU JUMP ...