The Geffen Playhouse has a new artistic director: Tarell Alvin McCraney, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient (2013) and Oscar-winning co-screenwriter of the film Moonlight (2016). He’s written several plays, including the acclaimed Choir Boy, which made its West Coast debut at the Geffen. McCraney was also a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and ran the Yale playwriting program, which admits just three people a year.
“There's a growing pain happening around me, it's certainly happening at the Geffen Playhouse. … We’re almost 30 years old. … At 30, a lot of us said, ‘Well, I bet I probably need to get out from under the shadow of my parents a bit, and figure out what my values, what things are important to me [are],” he tells KCRW. “And that's happening institutionally for us and … for the neighborhoods surrounding us and for the people engaging. … It’s really interesting that the pandemic and the recession in the arts specifically is forcing us to make some clear and aspirational looks at the future.”
He says the Geffen has brother and sister institutions that are looking hard at themselves, while his playhouse has lost subscribers and needs to find a newer membership model.
“Folks are going to concerts … circuses … magic shows … outdoor events. … People are actually paying more to be outside and together. So if people are being brave enough to choose that … while we're still seeing surges of COVID happening … we need to figure out how we can be in step with that and provide them with entertainment that feels like an event.”
Connecting with younger audiences is particularly crucial and there must be a concerted effort there, points out McCraney, who is 43.
“Theater-making only happens in collaboration. And so folks can't feel like there's a service agreement with theater, meaning they go in and put a coin in the slot, and then out pops this fully-made thing. People want to be connected to the process in a different way. Especially younger folks, we're seeing that you can try to fool them all you want, but they know how films are made. They make them. … They have access to the ability to make the things that we do everywhere.”
The attraction of immersive events and satisfaction of horror
How do you help people invest in the performing arts? McCraney says it’s about pulling back the smoke and mirrors of traditional theater. That includes educating audiences about playwrights and actors.
He also points to immersive live events, which some of his colleagues might not consider to be plays, such as Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights and productions of Sleep No More and Broadway’s Gray House.
“There's something about the engagement of the live event that is very palpable for folks, and folks want sometimes to escape, but also to deal with really dangerous, scary things in safer environments. And so I take an example like that, and go, ‘How do we do that? How do we make sure that we're providing a space for that in our theaters?’”
McCraney’s love for haunted houses and the horror genre writ large came from his mom, who read those types of stories to him when he was age 10. He says that after her death, his family started celebrating her life by going to haunted houses.
“They never scared me enough that I had nightmares. There were other nightmares we were dealing with outside and the reality of our life. But watching the first It, reading those Stephen King books, the mystery and intrigue of that was always very satisfying … because it felt contained, and it felt like something outside of us.”
McCraney wonders if there are opportunities for stories to be adapted into new forms of entertainment, much like Sleep No More, which is based on Macbeth.
“Where are the others in our canon that we can use as a template to tell the stories of today, of how we deal with grief … revenge … the larger things that are terrifying for us. And I'm interested in making sure that our young audience, our early audience, and early artists are a part of that discovery.”