Oscar Winner Tarell Alvin McCraney Joins Geffen Playhouse as Creative Director

The Geffen Playhouse has a brand new inventive director: Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney.

Introduced Tuesday by the Westwood nonprofit theater’s board of administrators, McCraney’s appointment is efficient instantly and his first order of enterprise is becoming a member of Geffen workers to construct a slate for the 2024-2025 season. His duties will embody programming “new works together with re-envisioned classics with a deal with revolutionary storytelling, group engagement and viewers expertise,” per the Geffen. He’ll even be charged with setting the inventive course for the Geffen’s Gil Cates and Audrey Skirball Kenis theaters and main the inventive and manufacturing groups.

McCraney replaces Matt Shakman within the position. Shakman, a director of TV, movie and theater initiatives, joined the Geffen as inventive director in 2017. In August 2022, he introduced he can be departing come February 2023, and a committee commenced a months-long seek for a substitute.

McCraney has historical past with the Geffen. In 2014, the Westwood-based theater offered his critically acclaimed play Choir Boy on the Gil Cates Theater with a inventive group that included director Journey Cullman and star Jeremy Pope. In February 2020, he was a part of the brand new Geffen Playhouse artist residency introduced with Forged Iron Leisure, a cohort of artists additionally together with Sterling Okay. Brown, Glenn Davis, Brian Tyree Henry, Jon Michael Hill and André Holland.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Instances, which first reported information of McCraney’s new gig, the playwright and screenwriter stated he’s had an ambition to turn into an inventive director “my total life.” In right this moment’s launch, he referred to as it an honor to tackle the mantle. “I see my position as persevering with a legacy of outstanding artistry, reinvesting within the Geffen’s distinctive functionality to nurture and help artists, construct upon collaborative partnerships together with with UCLA, and attain audiences that we share a group with throughout Los Angeles. I’m excited to foster intimate innovation in efficiency, digging deep into our collective want for stay connection right here at Geffen Playhouse.”

Geffen Playhouse govt director and CEO Gil Cates Jr. famous McCraney’s full-circle second with the venue. “At first, he’s an distinctive artist and storyteller, and a real visionary with extraordinary concepts for the place we will go as a theater, as a house for artists and as a part of the cultural panorama in Los Angeles.”

Added Adi Greenberg, chair of the board of administrators: “As an award-winning author, producer and educator, he’s a pressure of creativity and uniquely suited to guide our theater’s inventive imaginative and prescient. Along with Gil Cates, Jr., they’re a powerhouse group who will embrace the evolution going down within the trade, make daring, revolutionary selections and guarantee Geffen Playhouse is well-positioned for the long run.”

McCraney, a local of Miami, has additionally labored as a producer and educator. He’s identified for the trilogy, The Brother/Sister Performs, and his script In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, which he tailored to Oscar-winning outcomes for Barry Jenkins’ finest image winner Moonlight. His different credit together with David Makes Man and Excessive Flying Fowl.

He’s an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre and a member of Teo Castellanos D-Initiatives in Miami, together with a graduate of New World Faculty of the Arts, Theatre Faculty at DePaul College and the David Geffen Faculty of Drama at Yale. He obtained an honorary doctorate from the College of Warwick.

He lately served as co-chair of the Playwriting Program on the David Geffen Faculty of Drama at Yale, in addition to Playwright-in-Residence at Yale Repertory Theatre, the place he fostered a workshop program on the David Geffen Faculty of Drama. He’s an affiliate on the Royal Shakespeare Firm, London and a member of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences.

Geffen’s upcoming productions embody Each Sensible Factor, The Engagement Social gathering, POTUS, Black Cypress Bayou, Fats Ham, The Hope Idea and Tiny Father.