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n Friday, March 20, 2026, Emily Mann and Tarell Alvin McCraney, co-directors of the upcoming production of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”… and the Boys at the Geffen Playhouse, sat down for a “fireside chat” about their process directing this seminal work and their lives as dramatists, directors, and artists. Facilitated by Diana Burbano, their conversation has been excerpted and edited for the printed page.

Diana Burbano:  Thank you so much for doing this for us. I would love to start with what brings both of you here in this moment? What inspired you to come in and chat with us?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: We are gathered here today because I asked, almost exactly a year ago to the day, Emily to join us in directing “Master Harold”… and the Boys, a play she hadn’t directed but had known for a long time. Her close collaboration with Athol Fugard acquainted her with the work very early in its naissance. I knew at least partially that “Master Harold”… and the Boys was an autobiographic dramatic work, similar to my own work, The Brothers Size. It’s about a relationship between three men and how that relationship translates onstage. And one of the wonderful things that I wanted to look at is how can we be introspective in a global way, meaning, I think Mr. Fugard is really using this moment to take a look at his early awakening into the politics of a world and using that as a conversation starter for what the world can be.

Emily Mann:  Yes.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: I couldn’t think of a better person to engage that work than Emily. And shortly after I thought about it, Mr. Fugard passed away on March 8th of last year, so it felt even more urgent to get in touch and to work on it. Emily invited me to be in the room as well, which I appreciate and was challenged by.

Emily Mann:  That pretty much says it all. Athol and I were very close. I met him first while he was in previews for “Master Harold”… and the Boys on Broadway. I had just directed a play of his – another Port Elizabeth play called Hello and Goodbye. He calls himself a local playwright and his plays all take place in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

This play that we’re now engaged in is a very dangerous play to rehearse and to live through because the unspeakable happens in a room. One can come to a place in one’s life where you say things that you can never take back and love can get shattered. Or not. And with this particular play, very long-term collaborators could only take so much of the pain in the rehearsal room. And relationships have ruptured over this play.

I said to Tarell, “Well, I’m going to need you. I’m going to need your support.” And he said, “Well, great. I’m there. I’ll do it.” And I told him how dangerous the play was. And he said, “That you know that is why I want you to do it.” So, it opens on my dear late mother’s birthday and I thought that was a sign. I have Tarell on the one hand, I have my mother on the other hand, and I thought, “I can do this.” And it’s been nothing but a joy.

The other thing I wanted was to bring John Kani back to this piece. John Kani is a great, great South African actor. He started out with Athol from the beginning when—

Tarell Alvin McCraney:  Is it the Serpent Players?

Emily Mann:  It was the Serpent Players. This was a time in South Africa when Black people and white people could not work together and meet together. And Athol decided he wanted to do plays about Black people and he wanted them to be part of the creating of it, to tell the stories authentically. John was one of the beginners, the people who started the Serpent Players with Athol.

So, the great play Sizwe Banzi is Dead—I don’t know if any of you know that title, but that play basically changed South African and African literature. Once it got out of the country and went to England, it blew people’s minds, and suddenly people were aware of what was going on for Black people in South Africa, and the anti-apartheid movement took over. He’s credited, I think rightly so, for helping bring down the apartheid regime.

So, he’s a political playwright who always said, “I’m not a political playwright; all I write is about human beings,” but in fact he’s had more political impact, I think, than almost anyone we know. And he did his post-apartheid work at McCarter when I was artistic director there. He was the first person I called to come. So, we go way back.

And John is now approaching the role that he premiered in South Africa in 1983 as a young man and he’s now approaching the role, which is a beautiful role, of Sam, who was the father figure of Athol, now playing it as a grandfather figure, which brings even more depth, I think, and beauty and heartbreak to the play. So, we’re having a blast here.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Yeah. I’ve had incredible mentors in the theatre, and when I do any season selection I think of them. Emily is one of them. One of my first jobs out of grad school was at McCarter Theatre doing Brothers Size. And then they programmed all three of the plays, first with the Public Theater, In the Red and Brown Water¸ which Emily came to a reading of, and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet. But I only mention that because I had a lot of time to be underneath the management and the operation of theatres with Emily, with Peter Brook, with Martha Lavey and Steppenwolf, and they all have very similar advice for choosing plays, which is choose plays that are nourishing, and that theatre is a place where we practice being human beings. We artists are oftentimes socially awkward because we are actually practicing our humanity in the space.

So, for me, in a time where I need desperately to practice who I am and how much grace I can have and how much serenity I need and how uncomfortable a conversation can be while still engaging in good faith, this play teaches you that. This play teaches you about three men who have a level of grace and how you can be pushed by the outside and social cueings toward bigotry and extremism while trying to juggle the reality that you love these people you have grown up with and have grown close to.

And if Mr. Fugard can lay himself so bare, as he does in this play—especially because there’s so many people around this production who knew him, the one-to-one comparison of what happens in the play and had happened in his life are just—

Emily Mann:  Staggering.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: The verisimilitude is off the charts. It gives you chills. So, that he held back no punches and says, “That kid was me. That was who I was. And if not for these men, these Black men in my life, I would have gone on to become another bigot in the world.” I need that. That’s a kind of nourishment, a nourishing conversation that I need to be in with my audience. It’s an uncomfortable conversation that I need to have. That’s how I tend to program.

Emily Mann:  At this moment in time where we are seeing a rise of unbridled hatred in the country, I can hear Athol talking about how urgent it is that we look at ourselves. I think in this play people will see people that they recognize and then have to go, “Whoa, wait a minute. Are we allowing ourselves to be quiet about this?”

And it shows both how awful white supremacist systems like apartheid not only destroys those who are being oppressed—Black South Africans—but also the oppressor, how it’s corrosive. It rots your insides and brings out the worst in humanity. And when you talk about the grace, Sam, who John Kani is playing, shows such extraordinary grace about what it is to be a real human being, even when dealing in systems that are inhumane.

It’s a beautiful play, without being at all polemical, at all preachy. It’s just completely human.

★

I think some of us get lucky and then end up working with the same people because those people will challenge you and jump in. I like people who are emotionally fearless in the room. You can’t make a mistake in a rehearsal of mine. I want to see what works, what doesn’t. Throw it all up against the wall. Let it all go.

I love intergenerational work. I get very excited meeting new people, whether they’re playwrights when I’m directing or whether it’s actors when I’m writing.

But usually I want an anchor in there. Someone who—

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Gets it.

Emily Mann:  They get me. Whether I’m writing or directing. And I think you have that, too, don’t you?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Oh, yeah. I’ve been blessed. I was a very lonely kid, and I’m still quite socially awkward and shy, if you can believe it. And I have found my best friends in the theatre. One of them is working on this piece; Rodney Gardiner is our associate director. And I knew if I brought him into this process, you would feel like I felt when he cast me as Willie almost 30 years ago in this play back in high school. He cast me as Willie in my freshman year of school without knowing me. Just sort of going, “You’ve got something. You come do this part.” I said, “All right.”

You want people who go, “I see something in you you may not see in yourself.” You said a very similar thing about In the Red and Brown Water. I had written this play, and I remember you pulling me aside and going, “Somebody’s going to try to make this poem into a straight line. Don’t let them.”

Emily Mann:  Wow, did I?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Oh, yeah. I will never forget that. I was talking about the play and I said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t make logical sense.” And you were like, “It’s a dream. It’s a poem. It’s not supposed to make_—” and you pointed out Ntozake Shange, you pointed out the people this play had come from, its progenitors.

When you meet people who say things like that, who help you honor the magic that sometimes happens to us, you have to stick close to them. It’s an almost childlike curiosity that you want people around going, “Wait, what do you mean? What what are you saying?” And then you go, “I don’t really even know.” It’s drawing on something deeper as a practice. And as I say to students all the time, I can’t give you curiosity. I can give you ways to train it and practice it, but I can’t give you curiosity. That is the talent that God has given you. And when you see it in other people and you see that they have it in you, it’s so invigorating. You can’t get enough of it.
★

We always talk about the creativity and then the craft. Those two Cs have to work together. Craft is meeting but also subverting the expectation of the reader or the audience. That’s part of our job. But sometimes there are people who we just don’t have the same craft, and they just will not taste what we’re making. They will read this recipe over and over again and be like, “Turmeric. I don’t like turmeric. I’m not using the turmeric.” And that’s just true. We have to be brave and go, “Well, somebody likes a turmeric cake. Somebody will.”

Emily Mann:  Just keep going. I’m saying that to myself right now. I no longer run a theater. I got very spoiled. I’ve always made sure that everyone agreed that my play was ready. I never wanted to do anything because I was running the theater.

But now I see what y’all are up against. And there are people who know how to read a play in a theater and there are people who don’t. And you never know why your play didn’t get chosen for a season. But having been on the other side of choosing seasons, your season is fabulous.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Oh, thanks.

Emily Mann:  You’re balancing so many things. It’s just unbelievable.

Tarell Alvin McCraney:  I think it’s worse now. Honestly, I mean—

Emily Mann:  I do, too.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: I’m sure you were up against some bad times, but I do think it’s worse in some ways.

Emily Mann:  Tell me why you think so.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Well, because folks will clamor and be like “Where are the new plays?” And then you do a new play and nobody shows up to see it. Unless it’s a new play by Emily Mann or Paula Vogel, people are going “I don’t know…” And that was not true when I was coming up. When I was coming up and you all did my plays or new plays by my contemporaries, people were coming hungry to to hear a new voice, to see it, to discover it.

Emily Mann:  Well, we worked very hard to train an audience to be hungry for a new plays. When I started out, they had absolutely no interest in new plays. They were scared of new plays. And then we brought them along until finally, “We’ve seen enough Checkov.” That’s what they wanted. So, you really reaped the benefit of that.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Yeah, I did for sure.

Emily Mann:  Now there’s a problem again.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Yeah. The pendulum swung for sure.

Emily Mann:  Yes. Also, so many theaters don’t have the resources that you used to have for development and taking the care and making sure it’s ready before you put it out there. Things are being put up to early.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Oh, absolutely.

Emily Mann:  And it turns the audience off because the work isn’t good enough yet.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Or it’s just not done.

Emily Mann:  It’s not done. Let’s put it that way.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: It’s just not done.

Emily Mann:  It’s a half-baked cake.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: When I first got here, that was one of the things I said. I was like, “Look, just because we commissioned the play and we have a draft does not mean we go into production.”

Emily Mann:  Exactly.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: So, for example, the last two years, when we commission a play we automatically tell the playwright, “When you sign this, when you turn to your draft, you have dedicated development time where we are going to have a reading. We’re going to sit around and talk about the play, what the next steps are.”

That’s the other thing. I would see you at all of the workshop festivals. We got a chance to learn and know each other through all these labs, through all the many ways in which a young or early career writer could make craft, get development time. And all of that—

Emily Mann:  That’s gone.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: I know. It disappeared. And all of those programs are gone.

Emily Mann:  The Lark is gone.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: The Lark. Oh, my God. The Lark.

Emily Mann:  That was huge.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: The PoNY award – the Playwright of New York award. I mean, so many just have disappeared.

Emily Mann:  It’s a different ecological system.

★

Audience #1: I was struck by your comment of just sort of getting into the fugue state. How do you each summon your gods?

Emily Mann:  [Laughs] How do you get into the fugue state? I wish I knew. Boy, when it happens, it is heaven, isn’t it? I don’t think I know the answer. I mean, I know when I am really cooking I’m writing very quickly and in that zone, I’m in that state, and I trust what comes out. It may not be a finished thing, but it is the pure thought of where I am. And it often is a set of discoveries that keep on coming and it’s in waves and you can’t interrupt it. We’re talking about the same thing, right?

Audience #1:  Yeah, yeah.

Emily Mann:  Yeah. If I could order it up, I would.

[Laughter]

Sometimes I just keep working and keep going.

Tarell Alvin McCraney:  Until it comes.

Emily Mann:  Yeah, until something clicks and you’re off. And you don’t know from where it’s going to come. And the first fifteen pages you were doing you’ll be throwing out, but then you’re flying. So, I don’t have any answer, but I think we all keep going because we crave that gorgeous state.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: There are some points where it’s now 7:00 and I need to start writing and I’m doing it regardless of if I’m in a state of flow. However, to your point, I pray. I meditate. And my coffee is very specific. You know what I mean?

I’m enamored by the Miller and the Eugene O’Neill stories of them setting a time when they would sit at their desk. I don’t do that. I can’t. I’m running a theater. I’m in rehearsal. I’m directing something, which I don’t like doing but I do it because you have to sometimes. But I’m very particular about my coffee. My coffee has to be Cuban coffee. It has to contain the things that I feel like my ancestors brought to this shore. It has to have cane sugar, and my grandparents were World War II babies, so they use evaporated milk, and I use evaporated milk in my coffee.

Emily Mann:  Wow.

Tarell Alvin McCraney:  I have to have the things that make my senses go, “Here is that state of dreaming in your grandparents backyard or dreaming at my grandfather’s draft board or reading my grandmother who was a school teacher’s education books.” Even if I don’t achieve it, I’m at least setting up the platform for that state. I take that very seriously. I teach my students, “What is your ritual? What is the thing that you’re learning about yourself?”

Emily Mann:  I’ve had to write in the cracks—

Tarell Alvin McCraney: In the margins, yeah.

Emily Mann:  —for so long, whether I was a mother and I could only do it during nap time or I was running a theater and it was like I had a half day here or—

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Or a flight.

Emily Mann:  Yeah, I’m on a flight. They can’t get to me. I did a ton of writing on airplanes. For me, it’s a deadline, or, “I’ve got this moment; I’m going to grab it,” helps me a lot. I’m not a daily writer. I write in spurts.

Tarell Alvin McCraney:  Toni Morrison wrote really early in the morning because that’s before her kids would get up. Where are those windows and how do they become sacred to you? I think that it is important. It’s an important question.

Diana Burbano:  Somebody asked, “They talked about plays that aren’t ready, but how do they know when their play is ready to share? And do they share it with friends first?”

Emily Mann:  Good question. I share it with my husband. I read every part out loud –

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Read it out loud.

Emily Mann:  – to my husband first. Before him, it was my mother. And when I would do it, when I could embody it, I knew what was working and what wasn’t.

After that, there are a couple of friends who I would pass it by. Unfortunately, one of them was fellow playwright, and great playwriting teacher, Chris Durang, and he has passed. But there are a couple of friends who are absolutely honest with me whom I trust. How about you?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: For brevity, so much of the same. I’ll record myself reading it and listen to it and go, “Yeah… no.” But I start there and I expand out from that point. And I’m lucky enough to have a community of brilliant people: Glenn Davis at Steppenwolf, Sterling K. Brown, Jon Michael Hill, Andre Holland, Patricia McGregor… consummate artists who get it and can get it quickly and get feedback to me.

Diana Burbano:  Thank you. It’s been wonderful.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Yeah, thank you all for coming. Thank you all for being here.

Emily Mann:  Thank you so much. ★