Episode number 10, with playwright, Tarrell Alvin McCraney
\nTarell Alvin McCraney on living freely: \u201cI\u2019m starting a new chapter where I try to live and be as free as possible rather than be chained to survival mode.\u201d
\nWhat makes a person become a writer? An Academy award-winning, playwright, actor and co-writer of the 2016 film \u2018Moonlight,\u2019 Tarell Alvin McCraney likens writing more as a survival instinct, rather than a calling. Growing up with a constant feeling that change was imminent, Tarell found a way to take hold of that narrative, and rewrite it.
\nTarell began writing the first draft of \u2018In Moonlight black boys look blue\u2019 which later became the source material for the Oscar-winning movie, \u201cMoonlight\u201d with director Barry Jenkins. He describes it as an effort of piecing together the scapes of memories that he had about who he was, who his mother thought he was, and who he could become. In January of 2019, his Tony and Drama Desk award-winning play, Choir Boy debuted on broadway, and later that year, he made his television debut as writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed series, \u201cDavid Makes Man\u201d on Oprah\u2019s OWN network. In 2020, it won the prestigious Peabody Award, a first for the network. And lest he stops to catch his breath, Tarell also serves as the chair of the playwriting department at the Yale School Of Drama.
\nHere are some highlights\u2026
\nOn His Super Hero Story: \u201cWhen you grow up knowing that, that shift, that change is ever-present and can fall one way or another, it\u2019s sorta something you begin to survive rather than live\u201d (7:37)
\nOn the Internal Journey: \u201cIf you look around and see change happening all the time and you can\u2019t imagine yourself in it, then you begin to write yourself into stories\u201d
\nOn the Power of Word and Text: \u201cWords are powerfully limiting in that we are often grasping, throwing, pulling at, shaking up vocal sounds, to form, to shape, sometimes the unimaginable, the unquantifiable, the unpalatable things that are ephemeral feelings\u201d
\nOn the way, Spirit informs the Diaspora: \u201cBecause capitalism is the zeitgeist or spiritual animism of the United States, it interferes with a real look at spiritual and the understanding and investigation of that which is free\u201d
\nOn the Power of Naming Yourself: \u201cThat\u2019s what all religion, history, methodology, cosmology, are about trying to put some order to the world we live in through theses ideas of stories\u201d
\nOn the Idea of The Wounded Healer: \u201cEmpathy, If you too have been wounded, you know why it is necessary to heal\u201d
\nOn Advice to Young Writers: \u201cThere\u2019s moment\u2019s where you have to be still enough in what you\u2019re doing recognize when you are doing what\u2019s right for you and your work and your path\u201d
\nLinks we mention in the episode:
\nTarell's Instagram: @octarell_again
\nDavid Makes Man on OWN: www.oprah.com
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\nAdditional editorial content provided by Kalimah Small.
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