The Brother/Sister Plays

TARELL ALVIN MCCRANEY’s plays include The
Brother/Sister Plays: In the Red and Brown Water (winner of
the 2007 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award), The Brothers
Size (nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding
Achievement by an Affiliate Theatre for London’s Young
Vic production) and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. The
Brother/Sister trilogy was first performed at the McCarter
Theatre Center in Princeton, and then at The Public Theater
in New York City. Subsequently, the trilogy has had a long run
at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

Other plays include: The Breach (Southern Repertory Theater, New Orleans; Seattle Repertory Theater); Wig Out! (The Sundance Theatre Lab, Park City; the Royal Court Theatre, London; Vineyard Theatre, New York City); Without/Sin (Yale Cabaret, New Haven); Run Mourner, Run (Yale Cabaret); A Taurian Tale (The 52nd Street Project, New York City) and Promise Not to Tell (New World School of the Arts Playwrights Festival, Miami).

Tarell was born and raised in Liberty City, the inner city area of Miami. He graduated from the New World School of the Arts High School, with the Exemplary Artist Award and the Dean’s Award in Theater in 1999; matriculated into The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, graduating with the Sarah Siddons Award and a BFA in Acting in 2003. He attended the British American Drama Academy (BADA) Midsummer at Oxford, studying Shakespeare with master actors and teachers from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the throughout the UK. He received his MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama in 2007, being honored with the Cole Porter Playwriting Award upon graduation.

Tarell was honored with the 2007 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award from the Vineyard Theatre, and a 2007 Whiting Writers’ Award. In 2008, he was awarded a Hodder Fellowship at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University . He is the International Playwright in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company 2008–2010, a member of New Dramatists and a member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects in Miami.