Welcome to the weekend POU!
Choir Boy is a play by American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.
The play premiered in September 2012 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, before going on to play productions at New York City Center, Alliance Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, and many more regional theatres across the United States. The show opened on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on January 8, 2019, after entering previews on December 12, 2018.
Choir Boy follows a group of young, black students at Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys as they struggle with issues of identity and sexuality. Pharus is the vivid central character, a brighteyed, smart and enthusiastic Drew student. His pride in singing the school anthem at the graduation ceremony is sullied by the gay slurs hissed at him from one of his fellow students in the audience.
Pharus may not speak of his sexuality, but he’s not really hiding this beaming light under a bushel, either. The action begins as he refuses to divulge the name of the boy who taunted him, maintaining that this would be a breach of the school’s honor code. Even under the threat of expulsion, Pharus insists on behaving “as a Drew man should,”
But Pharus also knows that he can exact his own private revenge. Gospel music at Drew is a tradition as old as the school itself, and that tradition is embodied in its choir, where Pharus stands out and be different without fear – because he’s the choir’s best. And as leader of the choir, he has the power to decide who can and cannot sing. And in the choir’s first school year meeting, after a few tart exchanges the boy he believes humiliated him, Pharus flares into righteous mode and kicks Bobby out.
Choir Boy is a coming of age story… a story about responses to human differences and to bullying, by multifaceted characters whose lives hold together by the Gospel music they sing beautifully together and the humanity they and we all share.
Choir Boy won a 2019 Tony Award for Best Sound Design of A Play, as well as a Special Tony Award for musical arranger James Michael Webb. The play also won the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a play.