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Tarell Alvin McCraney. Photo by Sandro Miller <\/p>\nWriter Tarell Alvin McCraney\u2019s new drama\u00a0Windfall, running now at Steppenwolf Theatre through May 31, is billed by its theater company as a story about \u201cthe spirit of activism versus money.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play depicts a Chicago man whose son is killed in a violent police incident. When the father is offered a significant cash settlement, he is visited by strangers and ghosts, all of whom weigh in on his moral dilemma and ruminate on a key existential question: What is the value of a human life, specifically a Black life, in our society?<\/p>\n
McCraney, who is gay, won an Oscar for co-writing the 2016 Best Picture winner\u00a0Moonlight.\u00a0He is a longtime member of Steppenwolf and is additionally the artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
McCraney told Windy City Times that\u00a0Windfall\u2019s thematic questions have increasingly weighed on him as he has entered middle-age and seen the nation\u2019s impulses toward capitalism intensify. Societal discourses around health care, politics and public safety now can seem hijacked and shut down when they intersect with money, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the play, \u201cI\u2019m looking at the world in terms of what we value and how we value it,\u201d McCraney said. \u201cI think everybody can agree that in this country, money has a premium on our imagination, on our spiritual aspirations and on our physical well being.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added,\u201dBecause of the way in which our society is structured, money is always the goal, rather than the tool towards a more perfect union. \u2026 Literally the law currently stipulates that we put aside in our police budgets at least $83 million, I believe, in Chicago, for police misconduct\u2014and no money in revitalizing or strengthening [solutions to] the reasons why that misconduct happens in the first place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tarell Alvin McCraney. Photo by Sandro Miller <\/p>\n
Like most of his previous stage work,\u00a0Windfall\u00a0makes extensive use of music to accompany its stage action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn something like this, dealing with activism or the ways in which we speak truth to power, music is always been there\u2014whether in the songs of protest and activism, or in the church,\u201d McCraney explained, adding that in\u00a0Windfall,\u00a0\u201cMusic was always going to be a part of it. There\u2019s just a musicality in the way we speak\u2014I think that that lends itself to a kind of rhythm in the play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Theater has been a passion for McCraney since he was a youngster growing up in Florida. He was bullied frequently and took figurative refuge at Miami\u2019s African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, and fell under the tutelage of its director, Marshall L Davis, Sr., for whom the Center has since been renamed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Davis offered the young McCraney the chance to \u201chide without hiding,\u201d he said. \u201cMr. Davis said, \u2018There [will] be no hiding here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The school had a very \u201cBlack Arts Movement-approach,\u201d McCraney recalled, meaning participants learned about everything the Center had to offer. So McCraney took classes in acting, singing and dancing, and, perhaps most significantly, cultivated a passion for writing.<\/p>\n
McCraney eventually graduated from DePaul University\u2019s Theatre Program, where he began writing the script\u00a0Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, the basis for\u00a0Moonlight, as well as the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. He is also now chair of Yale\u2019s playwriting program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It has been a decade since he and director Barry Jenkins shared a best adapted screenplay Oscar for\u00a0Moonlight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been to the Academy Awards since, and so I think I think it was one of those once in a lifetime things,\u201d McCraney said. \u201cNot to say that I wouldn\u2019t go back again. I think that it\u2019s one of those things that I\u2019m very grateful for, and blessed that things turned out the way it turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCraney rewatches the film occasionally \u201cto see what it still has to teach me\u201d and he admitted that the story still resonates with him the same way it did when he first conceived of it as a DePaul student in 2003. \u201cI\u2019m so glad that I had the encouragement and the blessing and grace for it to be made into a film\u2014I\u2019m so grateful for that,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McCraney wrote and executive-produced the series\u00a0David Makes Man\u00a0as well as the 2019 Steven Soderbergh film\u00a0High Flying Bird.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Tarell Alvin McCraney (Playwright). Photo by Jeff Lorch <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m fundamentally a theater artist,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there are certain stories that belong either in the [television] series or in the feature [film] world. So when those moments come up, I work hard to make sure that those stories get told in the way that they feel best served. But I\u2019d be being disingenuous if I didn\u2019t say I was a theater artist first.\u201d<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t be returning to acting anytime soon. He said performing the lead role in 2019 in\u00a0Ms. Blakk for President, a play he co-wrote with Steppenwolf collaborator Tina Landau, was both his \u201cswan song\u201d and \u201cborn of necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, there were just so few folks who could do the role, and would do the role, and we just felt like it\u2019s a story that needed to be told,\u201d he recalled. \u201c\u2026It was a hard show to do. Once I was on stage, I was on until until it was over. There was no intermission. So it felt like a great time to stop doing something that I don\u2019t really like doing anymore anyway.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He co-directed what he said was \u201ca beautiful production\u201d of\u00a0\u201cMaster Harold\u201d\u2026and the Boys\u00a0at Geffen Playhouse earlier in the spring, and said he had several other \u201cirons in the fire\u201d for upcoming projects, including a new play at the Vineyard Theatre in New York City this fall. He\u2019ll also help Steppenwolf mount a Chicago run of the recent Broadway version of the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019s\u00a0Purpose, which won the 2025 Best Play Tony as well as the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McCraney now calls Los Angeles home, but, given his close ties to Chicago\u2019s theater community, he returns to the Windy City several times a year. He said that Chicagoans, more so than audiences in other cities, have responded enthusiastically to his body of work, particularly\u00a0Moonlight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe movie wasn\u2019t set in Chicago, and I wasn\u2019t born in Chicago, but whenever I go back to Chicago\u2014I\u2019m stuttering to say this, because it feels like I\u2019m bragging\u2014people recognize me there, like when I go into a restaurant,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t happen to me anywhere else. It doesn\u2019t happen in L.A. and it doesn\u2019t happen in Miami, where I was born and raised. In Chicago, people hold the work so dear. I can never get over how wonderful the city has been to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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