Robert O'Hara, the director and playwright who staged Brothers Size and Marcus for the McCarter, says McCraney's writing has ``a poetic vulgarity which is absolutely breathtaking. He comes from a real place. There's beauty in the horror of it all.''

Truth, too. The Brother/Sister Plays are his own inventions, but embedded in them are threads from the lives of his sister Keonme (the inspiration for the self-sacrificing Oya in In the Red and Brown Water), his brothers Jason and Paul (The Brothers Size) and, in Marcus, his own experiences as a gay kid in a tough urban neighborhood. The plays, says cast member Marc Damon Johnson, are ``epic, timeless and universal.''

''Tarell went back in time to simplistic, dream-like theater,'' says Alano Miller, an Orlando native who plays Marcus. ``We say the words, and you believe. You visualize everything.''

THE BAD TIMES

McCraney's stew of influences is wide-ranging: Brook's ideas in The Empty Space, Lorca's Yerma, the musicality of August Wilson's work, the poetry of Essex Hemphill, the choreography of Alvin Ailey, the structure of classical theater, Yoruban mythology, the way Miami performer-playwright Teo Castellanos (the man McCraney calls ''my father in theater'') taught him to turn the hard experiences of life into transformative art.

Those tough times? As a child and teen, McCraney had enough to last a lifetime. His mother struggled with drug addiction, developed AIDS and died less than two months after he graduated with honors from DePaul. While he was still a kid, he became a surrogate parent to his two younger brothers and their sister, whose sacrifices in caring for their mother are reflected in In the Red and Brown Water. There was little money, sometimes no food or electricity, and Hurricane Andrew destroyed the place where the family was living. Once, after McCraney moved to his father's home in Liberty City, he found himself trailed by bullies tossing rocks and yelling ''faggot'' in his direction.

He found theater as a teen when he joined a troupe run by Castellanos at the Village South.

''It saved me,'' McCraney often says.

There he learned to express himself as a performer and writer, to turn pain into powerful drama. When McCraney created a piece called Crack House and performed it at a substance-abuse program, ''by the end, the audience would be bawling,'' Castellanos recalls.

High school at the New World School of the Arts, college at DePaul, grad school at Yale and growing acclaim have taken McCraney to a different place. Inevitably, his world has changed, as he collaborates with some of theater's greatest talents, jets all over the world, collects honors for his work.

Yet, say those who know him, McCraney is fundamentally the same focused guy.

''Tarell is so not taken with himself,'' Mann says. ``He's modest and humble. What he wants to do is give back. He's just such an inspiration.''

Brian Tyree Henry created the role of Oshoosi Size, a man newly out of prison, when he and McCraney were at Yale and has played it in seven productions of TheBrothers Size. His ongoing friendship with McCraney has allowed him to watch the playwright navigate the whirlwind of fame.

''Tarell is doing great,'' Henry says. ``His spirit is just huge. . . . He really believes in what he puts out there. He knows the audience, he knows the stories he want to tell. . . He has found his light, and he knows how to shine it.''

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