The Brothers Size at 20

An Interview with The Brothers Size playwright & Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney

By Lindsay A. Jenkins, Dramaturg for The Brothers Size

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Lindsay A. Jenkins: How would you describe your artistic point of view, and how does it come across in this play?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: I’m always trying to make the intimate epic, meaning finding a way to grab my personal impulses or the personal impulses that I see in other human beings and activate them in a way that allows the theatrical engagement to be epic. I hope to make the quest for finding one’s voice or figuring out what someone desires or whether or not one should get married or have kids, or even something as as simple as, whether or not they’re vegetarian; how to make human decision making—the struggle in that—become palpable in a larger way. And because I was raised in West African arts, and Caribbean arts, in Southern and Black Southern tradition of theatricality, the ways that I use to make that theatrical can include music and dance and ritual. No matter how intimate the impulse, no matter what one thinks of as personal, questions always find a way to hit three realms of human experience—the personal, the political, and the spiritual. Those are tools that I use to make something theatrical.

I always try to take an intimate question, especially if I feel inspired by it and ask myself how to make it epic and beautiful?

LJ: What new discoveries have you made about this play during this process?

TAM: There are so many new discoveries I’m making about this play, and I wanted to work with some folks that I had worked with, like Bijan [Sheibani, the director], and then invite a whole new creative team and cast. Both Bijan and I feel there are things about the play that are foundational, that feel kind of set. There is a rhythm and a song to the play, and those need to be maintained and looked after while allowing people with fresh eyes and perspectives to bring their full selves to it and invigorate the other ways in which it can be activated.

And these artists from lighting design, to the actors, to the vocal coach, to the dramaturg, are bringing in their skillful ways of looking at the play and unearthing so many things that we hadn’t touched on really. The dialectic of African-American theater and how the theatricality plays out specifically, in a way, for folks in America. How we understand code switching and how it works to engage the play, how we look at the way in which ritual enlivens the play while also makes it as every day, or as quotidian as jumping a broom [or] sprinkling salt behind your head. What are the ways in which this play lives within our cultural present while also helping us look at our future? That’s been really exciting. The ways in which we use music and rhythm and time, that it is connected. We can look at the scope of music in the African-American experience or the Black American experience and see a real timeline of how that’s going to play out and how that music grows and points towards our future. Stan [Mathabane, the composer and musician] and the actors are bringing their voices and have been helping us see that in ways that I haven’t before. I have felt it, but here they are able to call it, name it and use it in an intentional way. So that’s been astonishing to see.

LJ: Why do you think that Yoruba cosmology is a good vehicle to tell a story about the justice system?

TAM: You know my learning of the Yoruba cosmology came to me through the Caribbean, so I was not in West Africa when I learned this—maybe the storytelling is different there—but in Miami and in the Caribbean, in Haiti and in the places that I have experienced these stories, the lesson is less about black and white, is less binary—there are gradations. For a long time our justice system has been a kind of binary—somebody’s either right or wrong, there’s either guilt or innocence. And then, in recent years, there’s been a push to try to make sure that there is a way for folks who were incarcerated to be able to come back home and there’s been fewer and fewer ways of looking at how we want to achieve freedom—partially because there’s just not a lot of freedom given in our society.

So one of the important things in the Yoruba storytelling, or the deity storytelling, or the ancestor storytelling is a lesson about human nature, about the human connection. Once that lesson is achieved, once that learning is happening then you move to another lesson. This is the most important thing for me—I cannot control all the political spheres, but a decision needs to be made about the connectivity, about treating each other a certain way, a path towards healing. And that’s usually how those stories start, right? There’s a journey towards something. There’s a path laid out, usually by a legend, and there’s a decision that needs to be made. A crossroads is met and you need to be fully aware of yourself and who you are in that moment to make that decision. So that coupled with, again, the incredible way you have to engage both music and dance and you cannot negate the ways things are social, political, and spiritual. They are all one.

The two lines that inspired the story were, “Ochosi wanders and Ogun builds tools to find him.” There’s something in that very small language that just talks about the kind of cyclical nature of their relationship. It doesn’t say that he ever finds him. And it doesn’t say that Ochosi ever sits still. It says that he wanders and his brother builds tools to find him, literally builds the mechanism to find him. And there felt something cosmic about that. There felt something familial about that. And there certainly felt something political about that. Engaging that directly felt like a way that it allows the audience so many ways into the play, but also so many ways to journey with the play.

So I want to make sure that folks are understanding that these things may not look the same and they don’t need to. They shouldn’t. But they have a common core. They have a connectivity. They have an exploration that is going to move us forward in a way that not only feels alive, is alive. And if we let them, they will point to us a future that we keep missing.

LJ: As you said earlier, when you wrote this play, there weren’t a lot of Afrocentric methodologies and approaches and entryways into Black theater. What do you hope your play adds to the culture?

TAM: It's not that I don't have hope the play does that. I think the play can do those things, but the play operates on its own. It's doing a job that is very clear in my mind. And that job is to engage an audience in a journey with these young men and to see them differently by the end of it, right? So I don't want to put any pressure on it to do that. It's the reason why I remain in education, to make sure that Black theater, ritual theater—the theater that I came up with—is being shared with a multitude of folk. I remain in education so I can keep pointing that out, and advocate for that.

I was recently talking to Kristen Adele Calhoun [playwright of Black Cypress Bayou] about a class that she's teaching, and encouraged her to point to plays that existed before The Brothers Size, but also to ones that have come after—plays by Aleshea Harris or Dominique Morisseau. And in the looking back, look to Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka, and Spell No. 7 by Ntozake Shange, and then looking at standards like A Raisin in the Sun where Walter Lee and Beneatha have a moment where they call on the ancestors—even as they wait for an insurance check, right? There are moments of Black theater that I think it's important to remember. And we haven't even scratched the surface of queer Black theater which is very much alive. What Raja Feather Kelly and James Ijames are doing is extraordinary.

LJ: So this interview for the 20th anniversary of this play is now part of the archive of material around The Brother/Sister plays. Is there anything that you want future productions to know about this piece?

TAM: The thing I would want them to know is: Do the investigation and listen to the play. Do the investigation and listen to the play.

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The Brothers Size

AUG 14 – SEP 8, 2024
AUDREY SKIRBALL KENIS THEATER

Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Bijan Sheibani
A Co-Production with The Shed
Featuring Alani iLongwe, Malcolm Mays & Sheaun McKinney

Drawing from the rich tradition of the Yoruba people of West Africa, The Brothers Size is a modern-day fable about two brothers in the Deep South. Ogun, the elder brother, embodies hard work and reliability, while Oshoosi, formerly incarcerated, is seemingly carefree and unpredictable. Their relationship is tested when the charismatic Elegba arrives, tempting Oshoosi back to his old habits. As the brothers wrestle with loyalty, freedom, and duty, their humanity is revealed through a raw and heartfelt exploration of the bonds of brotherhood.

Geffen Playhouse’s Theater as a Lens for Justice initiative provides access to this production and supplementary programs for populations impacted by incarceration and is supported, in part, by Jayne Baron Sherman.

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