A.C.T., Magic, and Marin Theatre Co Announce Details For THE BROTHER/SISTER PLAYS

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), Magic Theatre, and Marin Theatre Company (MTC) have announced the full details of their first-time partnership: Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays. The acclaimed trilogy, which has taken New York and Chicago by storm, will receive its West Coast premiere at the three theaters in the fall of 2010. MTC presents Part I, In the Red and Brown Water, directed by MTC Producing Director Ryan Rilette (boom and Magic Forest Farm at MTC), September 9 through October 3. Magic Theatre simultaneously presents Part II, The Brothers Size, directed by acclaimed local playwright and director Octavio Solis (Lydia at MTC, Pastures of Heaven at California Shakespeare Theatre), September 9 through October 17. Then A.C.T. presents Part III, Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet, directed by award-winning director Mark Rucker (A.C.T.'s The Rainmaker and the film Die, Mommy, Die!), October 29 through November 21. As a result of the three-theater partnership, subscribers to each theater will have access to $40 tickets to the other two shows in the trilogy. For more information about McCraney, the trilogy, and ticket offers, please visit www.brothersisterplays.org.

These three interconnected plays introduced McCraney as a brilliant new American voice last season, prompting the Chicago Tribune to state that The Brother/Sister Plays are "surely the greatest piece of writing by an American playwright under 30 in a generation or more." New York Times critic Ben Brantley proclaimed, "Watching [The Brother/Sister Plays], you experience the excited wonder that comes from witnessing something rare in the theater: a new, authentically original vision. It's what people must have felt during productions of the early works of Eugene O'Neill in the 1920s or of Sam Shepard in the 1960s." McCraney speaks to the unprecedented partnership that is bringing the trilogy to the Bay Area: "It's incredible that three theaters have taken on doing all three plays, really allowing for each play to live distinctively and have a conversation with each other across the Bay Area." The plays can be seen in any order, with each reflecting, echoing, and creating a poetic dialogue with the others. Grand and universal in scope, yet also intimate and heartfelt, McCraney's plays combine an authentic exploration of a gritty and urban reality alongside magical flights of the imagination, exploding modern sexuality in provocative and poetic ways.

Marin Theatre Company will present the first play, In the Red and Brown Water. Ryan Rilette, who directs the show, has a longstanding artistic partnership with McCraney, having commissioned, developed, and directed the world premiere of The Breach, the celebrated play about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina-written by McCraney, Catherine Filloux, and Joe Sutton-at New Orleans's Southern Repertory Theater (where Rilette was producing artistic director until 2008). In the Red and Brown Water tells the story of Oya, who can run faster than anyone, but not fast enough to escape her fate. When pressed to choose between her dying mother and her own future, she makes a life-changing decision. Her journey from the promise of youth to the complicated yearnings of womanhood is a joyous, raucous, brazenly theatrical experience. In the Red and Brown Water runs September 9-October 3, 2010, at Marin Theatre Company (397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley). The opening night performance is Tuesday, September 14, 2010, at 8 p.m. For more information on In the Red and Brown Water and to subscribe to MTC's 2010-11 season, please visit www.marintheatre.org.

Magic Theatre will take on the second play of the trilogy, The Brothers Size, directed by acclaimed local playwright and director Octavio Solis. The play asks the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" After a homecoming in the bayous of Louisiana, the Size brothers, Ogun and Oshoosi, try to start fresh. This haunting, funny, and heartbreaking tour de force probes sexuality, coming of age, and the bonds of family. The Brothers Size runs September 9-October 17, 2010, at Magic Theatre (Northside Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, San Francisco). The opening night performance is Tuesday, September 21, 2010, at 8 p.m. For more information on The Brothers Size and to subscribe to Magic Theatre's 2010-11 season, please visit www.magictheatre.org.

A.C.T. will produce the final show of the trilogy, Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet, directed by acclaimed director Mark Rucker. A few days before Hurricane Katrina, the barometer rises and the air below sea level closes in on a young black man, pressured to balance his sexual identity with family creeds and the magical cultural landscape that surround him. Marcus, with its warmth, myth, humor, and Louisiana argot, is a fantastical coming-of-age play. Marcus runs October 29-November 21, 2010, at the American Conservatory Theater (415 Geary Street, San Francisco). The opening night performance is Wednesday, November 3, 2010, at 8 p.m. For more information on Marcus and to subscribe to A.C.T.'s 2010-11 season, please visit www.act-sf.org.

All three artistic directors speak to the uniqueness and power of McCraney's voice. "McCraney's raw, poetic, 29-year-old lens miraculously reflects back to us our most ancient souls," says Magic Theatre Artistic Director Loretta Greco. "His voice is one of the surest signs that theater today is still a vital act of communion." A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff adds: "McCraney is one of the most exciting writers to emerge in the American theater in the past decade. His work is pungent, passionate, poetic, almost ‘Greek' in its scope, but also hilarious and accessible." MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis concurs: "That three theaters could agree to mount a trilogy together speaks to the sheer genius, relevance, and importance of Tarell's voice and vision."

Tarell Alvin McCraney's most widely performed plays include Wig Out! (developed at The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, and produced in New York by Vineyard Theatre and in London by The Royal Court Theatre) and The Brother/Sister Plays, which include The Brothers Size (which premiered simultaneously in New York at The Public Theater, in association with The Foundry Theatre, and in London at the Young Vic, where it was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre); In the Red and Brown Water (winner of the ALLIANCE THEATRE's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, produced at the ALLIANCE THEATRE and the Young Vic); and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet. His other plays include Without/Sin and Run, Mourner, Run (adapted from Randall Kenan's short story), both of which premiered at the Yale Cabaret. In the summer of 2006, McCraney, Catherine Filloux, and Joe Sutton wrote The Breach, commissioned by Southern Repertory Theatre, where it premiered in August 2007 to mark the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The Breach also played at Seattle Repertory Theatre in the winter of 2007.McCraney attended the New World School of the Arts High School in Miami, Florida, receiving the Exemplary Artist Award and the Dean's Award in Theater. He holds a B.F.A. in acting from DePaul University. McCraney is a graduate of Yale School of Drama's playwriting program, where he received the Cole Porter Playwriting Award upon graduation. He is the Royal Shakespeare Company's international writer in residence, the 2009 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and the recipient of Vineyard Theatre's 2007 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award. He is currently under commission at Manhattan Theatre Club and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and he is a member of New Dramatists and Teo Castellanos D-Projects in Miami. In 2008, McCraney was the recipient of London's Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.