Tarell Alvin McCraney talks about playwrighting, screenwriting and building community intentionally

Tarell Alvin McCraney. PHOTO BY JUSTIN BETTMAN/AUGUST.
Tarell Alvin McCraney. PHOTO BY JUSTIN BETTMAN/AUGUST.

 Tarell Alvin McCraney talks about playwrighting, screenwriting and building community intentionally

By Tia Carol Jones

Tarell Alvin McCraney graduated from the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Fla., and auditioned for the Goodman School at DePaul University. He graduated from DePaul University with a BFA in Acting. While in that program, he received training in play, getting onstage and being in the world that the actors were imaging at the time. He also learned the craft of making sure he was playing an action, delivering a line, projecting a voice.

“The way in which it helped as a playwright, is because I could look at the page and say, ‘well, an actor isn’t going to have a good time doing that,’ or ‘an actor is going to get into that role and not have much to do, or not have a lot of room.’ How can I make sure that there’s room for an actor and really live this circumstance,” McCraney said.

McCraney would go on to receive his MFA in Playwrighting from Yale University’s David Geffen School of Drama. In 2010, he became a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble. Steppenwolf is also a lot about play, a lot about the ensemble, about people getting on stage and knowing night-to-night they have a similar story to tell, but also, what’s happening between people, what they can do differently and what’s alive in the eyes that day.

At the core of a lot of McCraney’s work is a sense of collaboration, a sense of community, a sense of working with people who really want the betterment of the next person.

McCraney knew he wanted to become an actor, become a playwright and a screenwriter at 14, which is when he wrote his first play, for the Youth Fair Miami.

He knew he didn’t want to act in his 20s.  Writing became the thing he wanted to do. It allowed him the ability to collaborate with people and really connect with community, to build community. It enabled him to write something and call people into the room and get them together around telling stories. At 24, he wrote plays that he still engages with today.

McCraney describes his childhood in Liberty City Miami as complex and beautiful. He described Miami as a subtropical paradise with a very Urban sprawl. Growing up watching television and films, he didn’t see the world he lived in reflected in television. Both “Moonlight” and “David Makes Man” were set in Mami and Homestead, Fla.

“Something that was really important to me was just to make sure the lives of the people I saw, engaged with, loved, didn’t like so much, had a chance to be seen in the world, had a chance to know their stories meant a great deal to me and a great deal to the community,” McCraney said, adding that it is important to tell the stories of what happens in places so they won’t be forgotten.

“Moonlight” won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) and Best Picture in 2017 for the 89th Academy Awards. McCraney was already pretty numb, Ali had won for Best Supporting Actor, then McCraney and Barry Jenkins won for Best Adapted Screenplay. He described that moment as incredible and beautiful.

Initially Warren Beatty announced that “La La Land” won the Best Picture award. When the producer from the movie, Jordan Horowitz, realized, he announced that “Moonlight” was the actual Best Picture award winner instead on “La La Land”.

“I don’t even remember how I felt at that moment. I just remember being like I’m sincerely blessed here and we ought to get out of here before they change their minds,” he said, adding that because of the way the award was announced was confusing. “I guess I instantly thought, this is how this has to happen.”

McCraney believes it is necessary for stories about and centering Black people and by Black people to be in theaters, because Black people do their best work in conversation, when in dialogue about a thing, in front of each other. McCraney acknowledged to have a play like the “Piano Lesson” on Broadway now, and have audiences that look like the people in the play engage with that play, is where Black people do their best work.

McCraney also talked about how people consume series. Not everyone is watching via a television, but on some kind of screen, a mobile phone, a computer or tablet screen. He said it is imperative the stories that are told come through a screen because it becomes a part of “the lexicon of knowing.”

“Film is the place where we go to see things that are taking place, things that are intimate to us and seeing them epic.  The struggle of every day is made bigger, and we can see ourselves in it and we leave feeling a little more heroic because of that. It is the place where we go to be the authors of our stories and feel some agency. For Black people to be able to see a world they can engage, be in, or allow their imagination to stretch in a way they might not have been able to before, that exercise is necessary. It helps us see ourselves,” McCraney said, adding that representation allows people to walk around differently.

McCraney is currently Chair of Playwrighting at Yale University. He is also teaching and developing some projects.

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