TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY  is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He is the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble.

As an actor, he has worked with directors such as Tina Landau of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, Illinois, David Cromer, and B. J. Jones, artistic director of the Northlight Theatre (where McCraney co-starred in the Chicago premiere of Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange), and developed a working relationship with Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne of the Bouffes du Nord, Paris. He is a member of the D Projects Theater Company in Miami.

While at Yale, McCraney wrote the Brother/Sister trilogy of plays, which are set in the Louisiana projects and explore Yoruba mythology.

From 2008 to 2010, he was the RSC/Warwick International Playwright in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In April 2010, McCraney became the 43rd member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble. In July 2017, he became the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

In 2016, he co-wrote the screenplay for Moonlight with Barry Jenkins, based on his own play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. The Academy Award Best Picture-winning film was critically acclaimed, and McCraney and Jenkins won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2019, he wrote the screenplay for the film High Flying Bird, which was directed by Steven Soderbergh and released by Netflix. He also wrote the screenplay for the television series David Makes Man, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network.