Tarell Alvin Mccraney

Tarell Alvin McCraney is an award-winning American playwright and actor. He is a member of Teo Castellanos/ D Projects Theater Company in Miami and in 2008 became RSC/Warwick International Playwright in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In April 2010, McCraney became the 43rd member of the Steppenwolf Theater Ensemble.

McCraney attended the New World School of the Arts High School in Miami receiving the exemplary artist award and the Dean's Award in Theater. He matriculated into the Theater School at DePaul University received his BFA in acting. In May 2007 he graduated from Yale School of Drama’s playwriting program where he received the Cole Porter Playwriting Award upon graduation.

As an actor he has worked with directors such as Tina Landau of the Steppenwolf Theater Ensemble Chicago, IL, David Cromer and BJ Jones artistic director of the Northlight Theatre (where he co-starred in the Chicago Premiere of Joe Penhall’s (Blue/Orange), and began a lasting working relationship with Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Etienne of the Bouffes du Nord, Paris.

His Brother/Sister trilogy are set in the Louisiana Projects and explore Yoruba mythology, and Wig Out, which is set in New York drag clubs, explores McCraney's experiences as a gay black man.

The third play in the Brother/Sister trilogy, Marcus: or the Secret of the Sweet has been optioned by London's Young Vic Theatre.

McCraney heads up an impressive list of out media professionals in the June/July 2009, The Advocate magazine’s Forty under 40,. Six months earlier he made the prestigious Out 100, alongside Edward Albee, Sir Ian MCKellen, and Gus Vant Sant, among others.

The Brother/Sister plays started as a workshop at the Yale School of Drama and appeared at the Under the Rader Festival at the Public Theater in New York produced by the Foundry Theater and in the IN-Festival at the McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ 2007. The Brothers Size received its European premiere at the Young Vic in November 2007 to considerable acclaim and an Olivier Award nomination.