![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/C202604-Go-Windfall-Arenas-Hill-Davis.jpg\")
Windfall reunites three members of the Purpose cast: Alana Arenas (top, at center) and Jon Michael Hill and Glenn Davis (bottom, from left). <\/p>\nThe purpose of art,\u201d James Baldwin once wrote, \u201cis to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.\u201d More than half a century later, this maxim echoes in the work of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, who never met an assumption he didn\u2019t want to challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really do believe that you can tell a lot about a community by the stories they tell, and I was just trying to figure out which stories might be missing that I need to be telling,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I say \u2018telling,\u2019 I don\u2019t mean it as an answer. I mean: There are large questions that loom in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCraney is referring to his latest work, Windfall, which gets its world premiere at Steppenwolf, April 9 to May 31. It features the playwright\u2019s signature recipe of intense real-world issues leavened with wry humor and a dash of the mystic. Set in Chicago, it follows the struggles of Mr. Ma\u00f1o, whose nonbinary child, Eli, is shot by police during a protest on the Southwest Side. As he navigates his grief, various agents of the state call on Ma\u00f1o, trying to get him to agree to a settlement to compensate for his loss.<\/p>\n
It gets at a thorny issue that\u2019s nagged at McCraney for years: \u201cWe call ourselves a civil society, but when children are taken away from us by state violence, we offer checks. That\u2019s what we do. It\u2019s terrifying that this sort of situation is quotidian enough that there\u2019s a line item in the budget for that kind of pain. I often mourn twice for the parents who have to decide what to do at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The piece was commissioned by Steppenwolf\u2019s artistic directors, Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis. Says Davis, who also stars in the play: \u201cIt feels like fertile ground to explore the nature of capitalism, and how much we\u2019re willing to give up for the gain of the almighty dollar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Windfall reunites three members of the Purpose cast: Alana Arenas (top, at center) and Jon Michael Hill and Glenn Davis (bottom, from left). <\/p>\n
Tapping McCraney to write for the company\u2019s 50th anniversary season was a no-brainer, given his artistry and high profile. He was 32 when the MacArthur Foundation awarded him a \u201cgenius\u201d grant, 36 when he won the Oscar for Moonlight (the film adaptation of his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue). Now 45, the Miami native is currently the artistic director of L.A.\u2019s Geffen Playhouse, but his professional career began here. He got his undergraduate degree from the Theatre School at DePaul University, where he met Davis; after graduating, he was quickly cast in Steppenwolf\u2019s Theatrical Essays in 2004 and became an ensemble member in 2010. \u201cI think of Chicago as an artistic home, or at least a birthplace,\u201d he says. \u201cI certainly got some of the best theater and film education in Chicago. That changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Personally and professionally, he forged several key relationships here. \u201cTarell\u2019s my best friend in the world,\u201d says Davis. \u201cWe\u2019re kindred spirits, and we\u2019ve built our careers together.\u201d Another future ensemble member in that DePaul cohort: Alana Arenas, who also grew up in Miami. \u201cI\u2019ve known Alana since we were 14,\u201d says McCraney, \u201cand we\u2019ve always been working on something together. She\u2019s one of the unknown jewels of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Windfall cast reunites Arenas, Davis, and Jon Michael Hill\u2009\u2014\u2009a trio that recently rode the indomitable Purpose train. That play made its Steppenwolf world premiere in 2024, then went on to Broadway, winning the Pulitzer and the Tony. With the pedigrees involved, there\u2019s plenty of anticipation for Windfall\u2009\u2014\u2009especially because McCraney wrote it with these three actors in mind. (The cast of six also includes ensemble member Namir Smallwood.)<\/p>\n
Audiences should not expect the conventional. \u201cWindfall is a fable,\u201d McCraney notes. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t unfold like a sort of CSI: Chicago. Fantastic things happen.\u201d Among them: Davis\u2019s character, who directly addresses the audience, is a ghost. \u201cTarell takes a fragment of something and conjures it into its own new play,\u201d Davis says. \u201cWindfall has spiritual elements and musical elements I\u2019m very excited about. It\u2019s not a kitchen-sink drama. It\u2019s got a lot of surprises. This is a Tarell Alvin McCraney experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The purpose of art,\u201d James Baldwin once wrote, \u201cis to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":697144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[291697,291696,19607,960,291704,25432,161585,291695,5386,1818,291700,291698,6276,291699,380,66974,291703,41538,150623,30067,7120,133898,291694,291701,291702,15906,248517],"class_list":["post-697143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-alana-arenas","tag-audrey-francis","tag-broadway","tag-chicago","tag-csi-chicago","tag-depaul-university","tag-geffen-playhouse","tag-glenn-davis","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-in-moonlight-black-boys-look-blue","tag-jon-michael-hill","tag-l-a","tag-macarthur-foundation","tag-miami","tag-moonlight","tag-namir-smallwood","tag-oscar","tag-pulitzer","tag-purpose","tag-southwest-side","tag-steppenwolf","tag-tarell-alvin-mccraney","tag-theatre-school","tag-theatrical-essays","tag-tony","tag-windfall"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116329234334665468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}