Power struggles often drive the conflict in daily life, at work, at home, in families and in communities. For Flashpoint Theater Company’s latest play, “Run, Mourner, Run,” gay playwright and actor Tarell Alvin McCraney adapted a story about a young man caught in a power struggle between two of the richest men in a small rural town.
McCraney adapted the story for its Philadelphia debut from author Randall Kenan’s short-story collection “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.”
“When I was in graduate school,” McCraney said, “I asked him if I could adapt it into a play. He said yes and I was thrilled because his books were one of the first that I read about African-American people and homosexuality all in the same story — and not that oh-woe-the-black-man-who’s-gay story. It was just about a community that was trying to survive and move forward with a lot of history that was hard to deal with. That’s what drew me to the setting of Tims Creek, the fictional community in North Carolina.”
Like Kenan, McCraney, 29, spent a lot of his youth in the South and uses it as the setting for many of his works.
McCraney’s passion for acting landed him in the Yale School of Drama, from which he graduated in 2007. He continues to watch his star rise as his acting and writing talents have garnered critical acclaim and prestigious gigs in London and New York City, as well as all over the U.S.
McCraney has explored his experiences as a gay black man in a number of his plays, such as his “Brother/Sister” trilogy, which was set in a Louisiana project. But he said he relates more to the settings of the South than to the characters who inhabit his stories.
“I have an affinity for the story if anything; the entire landscape of the story, which deals with a small community in the South and trying to find opportunities out of it,” he said about “Run, Mourner, Run.” “It’s always been a beautiful, compelling part of America.”
He added that most people have a preconceived notion about what the South is like.
“I think the American South has a lot of myths to dispel everywhere, not just in the North or overseas, but everywhere, including in the South.”
While “Run, Mourner, Run” examines issues of sexuality, race, corruption and power, McCraney said his plays aren’t the place to look for transcendent messages about how to live.
“The great thing about the story is that it doesn’t answer any questions, which I find more appealing,” he said. “It brings up more complicated questions. It asks more deeper-nuanced questions and asks the audience to parcel through it. Just to be candid, I hate going to plays and someone being like, ‘And this is what you should think.’ Fuck that. If I wanted to do that, I’d go to a Fox News rally or someplace where Glenn Beck is speaking. I don’t need someone to tell me what to think about. I need them to expose to me the conflict in our community and ask me how I feel about that. Most people in the state, especially in theater, don’t get that chance.”
Flashpoint Theatre Company presents “Run, Mourner, Run” through Nov. 20 at Second Stage at The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St. For more information, visit www.flashpointtheatre.org or call (215) 568-8077.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].