CHICAGO — Tarell Alvin McCraney became a household name after winning an Oscar for his “Moonlight” screenplay in 2017. His Hollywood credits in the years since also include the script for Steven Soderbergh’s “High Flying Bird” and as creator and executive producer of the OWN series “David Makes Man.”
An actor as well as a playwright, McCraney is the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama. His play “Choir Boy” — which centers on a teenager at Black prep school for boys and his ambitions to lead the school choir — is currently in previews in a production at Steppenwolf Theatre, where McCraney is an ensemble member.
“This choir sings Negro spirituals, which W.E.B. Du Bois called ‘the soul of Black folks,’” McCraney said, “and those are both sacred songs but also political songs — they sang them on the front lines of the civil rights movement. So that music has a lot of legacy and it means something to be able to sing it and to be able to present it, because immediately you’re connected to history, you’re connected to a struggle toward liberation in this country. So that legacy was really important to me and I wanted to talk about who we pass that legacy on to. The kids of today, singing those songs, do they know what it means to wade in the water or to sing about being a motherless child — and what will they imbue that music with that’s purely from them? What’s their legacy going to be?”
There are many high points in McCraney’s career. You can’t really beat winning an Oscar for your first feature film. When asked to recall a memory from the opposite end of the spectrum, McCraney said: “I was going to tell a story about ‘Oh, I forgot my lines on stage,’ or ‘Oh, I wrote something and it was not historically accurate.’ And those are gaffes and embarrassments.
“But you asked about a story that I feel in the pit of my stomach.”
Here’s that memory.
My worst moment …
“One of the moments that recurs to me quite often is where I wasn’t paying attention, basically. I was directing a Shakespeare piece — it was one of the first times I ever directed and I actually won’t do it again — and I don’t remember what year this was, but it was before ‘Moonlight.’
“This happened in Stratford-upon-Avon (in England) where I had been told an actor had been treating cast members, especially women, not well. Particularly Black women. And I kept trying to get more understanding of what was happening, but the busyness of it all, I was overwhelmed.
“And one day, I gave a note and this actor just went off on me — yelling, pointing, threatening. And I dismissed it because I thought, this is what actors do. Listen, I’m from Steppenwolf, so I know actors do weird (stuff) like this. But it should have clicked in my head that, oh no, this person — who was not Black — has really got a problem with authority coming from Black people.
“So I went to the artistic director of the company I was working with and I was like, ‘Yo, I think this is a problem.’ And their advice to me was: ‘You should push back. You should get violent with them. Show them that you don’t play.’
“And I was like, I can’t believe I’m being told to get in someone’s face. I’m a grown person. We’re grown people. And we’re making believe for a living, right? This isn’t rocket science, this isn’t brain surgery — we’re telling old stories that are nursery rhymes at this point.
“So I just remember walking back into rehearsal and looking at the folks who were counting on me to protect them and thinking: Oh God, I am totally useless at this point. I’ve spent my entire life trying not to look like a stereotype, and at the same time that’s what I’m being asked to do.
“And my cast is looking at me like, ‘Hey, that just happened — so this person should be fired, right?’ And I go: ‘No. I went to the artistic director, I said that this incident happened, I said that it feels racially motivated and it feels awkward, and they said, “Well, push back.” They didn’t say they would handle it or that they would intervene.’
“It was so embarrassing, because I was supposed to deliver something and I didn’t.
“And that actor, they just brushed the whole thing off as ‘Oh, I’m having a bad time.’ That wasn’t OK, but clearly I couldn’t do anything about it. After that, I just sort of stopped talking to them and worked around them completely.”
What an untenable situation.
“More so for the actors. I mean, I was fine — I got to go home at some point, but they had to be on stage and engage with that actor.
“I think we’re now at a point where it’s like: Look, we have to have these conversations. Do you have an animus against who I am racially, which is this made up construct? Or is it something else? Or do you just not want to be here? I just want to live in a world where we can at least acknowledge what we’re talking about.
“There were people in that cast who should have been protected, and I should have protected them more, and I didn’t. In that moment, I did the dumb thing of trusting in the institution. We were doing Shakespeare and working with all these great theater folks and I thought: Of course this isn’t happening here, right? I leaned into this idea that this place exists because we all hold ourselves to a higher standard. And that was silly of me because, like everywhere, things are flawed.
“But I had that out of body moment of: Wait, this can’t be happening here. I was told: You figure it, but more so — where I grew up? If it was really important that you fight about it? You fought about it. Like, that’s just it. You had to fight to survive sometimes.
“And I thought, here I am in this very lily white place and those rules don’t apply here — and I was being told, actually they might. And that confused the (hell) out of me. Because I was like, yo, is that where we are? I try to keep that person at bay, but maybe I need to bring my full self into this room. And I feel like that’s what caught me off guard the most.”
The supervisor’s response put McCraney in an unwinnable position, as if he were being set up to earn a reputation for: He’s an angry Black man, he loses his cool, people don’t feel safe.
“Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. It was not fun. And listen, I come from chaos, so it’s a trigger. I come from a very chaotic place. And that’s why I thought, here I’m not supposed to do that.
“But it wakes me up in the middle of the night, because those actors and actresses deserved better. And I failed them in that moment. Which is why when people ask if I want to direct again, I’m like, ‘God, no.’
“If I had it to do over again, I would just stop. I would say: Fam, this is just not worth it. If this is how fraught we all have to get, we can just stop, recalibrate and level set in a way that allows the folks who want to be here to be here, and the folks who feel too heightened or upset or aggressive to not be here. It’s not that big of a deal. We’re not moving weight. We don’t have billions of dollars on the line. There’s no war zone across the border. There’s none of those things. So for me — and I have done this since then — I’ll say, ‘No, stop. We’re not doing this. I’m pulling the plug, walking away.’”
As the director of a play, you’re in a management position. But for people in creative fields, when you’re in school, is there more emphasis on the art than on managing people?
“You’re hitting it right on the head. The funny thing is, I had the skills but it didn’t occur to me to employ them because in school we were so focused on: This is how a play works, here’s how you produce a play in the American theater — worry about that.
“But I had spent my entire life before that as a peer educator in the theater. Like, I literally knew how to do mediation from a very early age. So I had that training. But by the time I got into school, that was not the focus. The focus was: Be creative and listen to your voice and everything will work out. And I remember thinking, this is wild — this isn’t painting, this is a collaborative art. You’re going to be working with people from all walks of life. And someone might come into the room one day with totally different energy because of something that happened on the subway.”
The takeaway …
“The thing that still wakes me up at night are those actors. I failed them. That was on me. So there will always be moments of regret. And there will be moments that catch you off guard.
“But I really do feel that, foundationally, there was a pivot in that moment. My life significantly changed because I thought: Never again. Fool me once, right? It made things crystal clear and in my work life it set a boundary.
“I think I could handle more of the bad behavior that sometimes happens in the entertainment industry if we were saving lives. If we were on the rush to finding the cure for cancer I’d be like, ‘Wow, all right — I don’t like that person, but look, we’re going to save so many lives.’ But to make people have to endure all that when they’re just trying to show up and make up a thing on stage for two hours? No. It can be hard! Always. But it’s not that hard.”
———
