“We seem to have tapped a nerve in audiences,” insists Tracy Letts, the author of the gripping Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning new play, August: Osage County. "I remember early in previews the audience response was beyond enthusiastic, they were involved in a way you rarely see. It felt like we were fulfilling some need on the part of the audience and for a theater artist, man that’s the best, that’s what you really look for.”

August: Osage County delivers the wit and humor of a classic TV sitcom wrapped in a harrowing story line. Set in a large country home outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the play reveals the dark side of the American family, in this case the Westons, and the way pain is inflicted upon one another and then passed along from generation to generation.

Audience Reaction Fuels the Actors

The success of the production lies in the strength of the ensemble who portray 13 family members deftly playing off each other as if Jazz musicians, engaging the audience in a way rarely experienced in the theater.

“It’s not like anything I have acted in my whole life,” admits Academy Award-winner Estelle Parsons who plays Violet, the pill-popping “take no prisoners” matriarch of the Weston family. “In the 60s and 70s I did one Broadway show after another — all the best American playwrights and this is a style that I have never encountered. The lights go up and ‘Boom’ the audience is into it. It is heavenly for me to have audiences jump in like that and be what they are supposed to be, the third element. There’s the actor, the plank to stand on and the audience, one, two, three.”

The play was staged first at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, where Tracy Letts is a member of the repertory company. That production, with a remarkable cast and directed by Anna D. Shapiro, was imported intact to Broadway where it opened to stellar reviews and became the show not to miss. Letts believes the play is easy to relate to because the theme is universal. “Everyone has issues in their families. And, if they don’t, then they aren't talking to each other.”

Or they aren’t telling the truth.

The story is loosely based on events in the Letts’ own southern Oklahoma family. His grandfather committed suicide when he was 10, and his grandmother spiraled into drug addiction over many years. The only character that is drawn from real life is Violet.

“She doesn’t talk much like my grandmother, but she hews very closely to my grandmother’s attitude and manner, “Letts admits. “My grandmother was a piece of work. When I gave the play to my mothers to read for the first time, I was very nervous about what her reaction would be. And her first response after reading it was, ‘I think you’ve been very kind to my mother.’”

At its inception, he envisioned a sweeping story for August based on the experiences of his family and an amalgamation of other Midwestern, Southern, Plains and Middle America families. “As I was working out my story, I figured the best container for that story was the sprawling American drama, one that would take place over three acts and play out over a luxurious bit of time.”

The Play's Universal Appeal

Steppenwolf Theatre Company co-founder and former Artistic Director actor Jeff Perry believes the more specifically someone captures their own background, where they came from, what they know, it starts to become universal. The reaction from people has overwhelming been that the play crosses all cultural, social and language boundaries because they recognize so much of their own families in this tale.”

Given the darkness and challenges that fuel this play, Perry feels the play could only have been written at this time in our history, reflecting the vastly different experiences of the Depression era generation and their Boomer children. “It is very specifically capturing the difference, culturally of one generation taking care of each other no matter how old we get in our own house or neighborhood to another that eschews the extended family living together,” he explains. “One generation of stay-at-home mothers to the next of women entering the work force and trying to be mothers and fulltime workers. And, in this play, that is a reunion of family, you are really throwing a bright light on the difference between family that used to live in a community their whole lives to family that as soon as they can leave, do so. And sometimes come back with real infrequency.”

Celebrated actor John Malkovich and Steppenwolf member told Perry what he loves about August is that “It is so funny that it’s moving and it’s so moving that it’s funny. The lines of demarcation are absolutely fluid, it’s not one or another.”

Profoundly Truthful, Utterly Hilarious

The dysfunctional Weston family grapples with issues of betrayal, abandonment, infidelity, addictions, incest, suicide, family secrets, inheritance issues — all with unflinching honesty and utter hilarity.

“Tracy has written so profoundly, truthful personalities in this play that every one of the characters is magnificent to inhabit and play,” says Parsons. ”They are about any family, anywhere. It is not a play about people who hate each other, this is a play about families where one minute you love them, and one minute you hate them. One minute you want them to stay and the next minute you want them to go. And then when they say they are going to go you say, ‘What, you’re not staying!’”

One of the things the actors were overwhelmed by when they first staged the play was the breadth of experience in the audience. “Some people were holding their sides laughing,” explains Letts. “Other people were in tears, really upset by what they were seeing. And there was a lot of cross talk—people in the audience talking to one another, talking about the play to people they didn’t even know.”

Letts was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August, a Tony for Best Play and numerous other awards. He also developed a “new love and respect” for his grandmother. “I think that the generation of people that Violet represents, especially that generation of women, suffered an awful lot of damage. And some of them, as in the case of Violet, found a way to take it out on succeeding generations.”

Not Just a Play, It's a Phenomenon

Beyond the critical acclaim and accolades, it is the communal response of the audience that give Letts the greatest thrill. “It’s that shared experience. It’s the idea that we’re all in that room together, feeling these things, seeing things we recognize or maybe being reminded of things we thought we’d gotten rid of. I hope audiences come away with that sense of community, not only with the people onstage, but with the people sitting around them in the theater.”

As the Weston family careens to a major meltdown, the audience is carried by a wave of validation that nobody’s family is without conflict and craziness. Some may share the collective relief that their family isn’t so dysfunctional after all.

“I don’t call it a play, I call it a phenomenon,” admits Parsons. “Because it is what I, as an actor, have dreamed of all my life—to have audiences partake fully. What is the theater without the  audience! The audience is a palpable part of the evening, that’s what the theater is all about.”


To listen to the August: Osage County podcast, click here.

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