Understanding Tracy Letts

Understanding Tracy Letts PDF Author: Thomas Fahy
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643361120
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in drama as well as Tony Awards for best play and best actor, Tracy Letts has emerged as one of the greatest playwrights of the twenty-first century. Understanding Tracy Letts, the first book dedicated to his writing, is an introduction to his plays and an invitation to engage more deeply with his work—both for its emotional power and cultural commentary. Experiencing a Tracy Letts play often feels akin to reading a Cormac McCarthy novel, watching a Cohen Brothers film, and seeing an episode of Breaking Bad at the same time. His characters can be ruthlessly cruel and funny, selfish and generous, delusional and incisive, and deceptive and painfully honest. They keep secrets. They harbor biases and misconceptions. And in their quest to find love and understanding, they often end up being the greatest impediments to their own happiness. As a writer, Letts can move seamlessly from the milieu of a Texas trailer park to the pulsating nightlife of London's countercultural scene, the stifling quiet of small-town Ohio to the racial tensions of urban Chicago. He thrives in the one-act format, in plays like Mary Page Marlow and The Minutes, as well as the epic scope of August: Osage County and Linda Vista. With a musician's sense of timing, Letts shifts between humor and heartache, silence and sound, and the mundane and the poetic. And he fearlessly tackles issues such as gender bias, racism, homophobia, and disability rights. Contemporary American life thus becomes a way to comment on the country's troubled history from Native American genocide to the civil rights movement. The personal narratives of his characters become gateways to the political. Understanding Tracy Letts celebrates the range of Letts's writing, in part, by applying different critical approaches to his works. Whether through the lens of disability studies, the conspiracy genre, food studies, the feminist politics of quilting, or masculinity studies, these readings help bring out the thematic richness and sociopolitical dimensions of Letts's work.

Understanding Tracy Letts

Understanding Tracy Letts PDF Author: Thomas Fahy
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643361120
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in drama as well as Tony Awards for best play and best actor, Tracy Letts has emerged as one of the greatest playwrights of the twenty-first century. Understanding Tracy Letts, the first book dedicated to his writing, is an introduction to his plays and an invitation to engage more deeply with his work—both for its emotional power and cultural commentary. Experiencing a Tracy Letts play often feels akin to reading a Cormac McCarthy novel, watching a Cohen Brothers film, and seeing an episode of Breaking Bad at the same time. His characters can be ruthlessly cruel and funny, selfish and generous, delusional and incisive, and deceptive and painfully honest. They keep secrets. They harbor biases and misconceptions. And in their quest to find love and understanding, they often end up being the greatest impediments to their own happiness. As a writer, Letts can move seamlessly from the milieu of a Texas trailer park to the pulsating nightlife of London's countercultural scene, the stifling quiet of small-town Ohio to the racial tensions of urban Chicago. He thrives in the one-act format, in plays like Mary Page Marlow and The Minutes, as well as the epic scope of August: Osage County and Linda Vista. With a musician's sense of timing, Letts shifts between humor and heartache, silence and sound, and the mundane and the poetic. And he fearlessly tackles issues such as gender bias, racism, homophobia, and disability rights. Contemporary American life thus becomes a way to comment on the country's troubled history from Native American genocide to the civil rights movement. The personal narratives of his characters become gateways to the political. Understanding Tracy Letts celebrates the range of Letts's writing, in part, by applying different critical approaches to his works. Whether through the lens of disability studies, the conspiracy genre, food studies, the feminist politics of quilting, or masculinity studies, these readings help bring out the thematic richness and sociopolitical dimensions of Letts's work.

Bug

Bug PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810123487
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
This dark comedy takes place in a seedy motel room outside Oklahoma City, where Agnes, a drug-addled cocktail waitress, is hiding from her ex-con ex-husband. Her lesbian biker friend R.C. introduces her to Peter, a handsome drifter who might be an AWOL Gulf War veteran. They soon begin a relationship that takes place almost entirely within the increasingly claustrophobic confines of her motel room. Peter begins to rant about the war in Iraq, UFOs, the Oklahoma City bombings, cult suicides, and then secret government experiment on soldiers, of which he believes he is a victim. His delusions infect Agnes and the tension mounts as mysterious strangers appear at their door, past events haunt them at every turn and they are attacked by real bugs. Tracy Letts's tale of love, paranoia, and government conspiracy is a thought-provoking psycho-thriller that mixes terror and laughter at a fever pitch.

Mary Page Marlowe

Mary Page Marlowe PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Samuel French, Incorporated
ISBN: 9780573705311
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
"Mary Page Marlowe leads an unremarkable life. As an accountant in Ohio with two children, few would expect her life to be inordinately intricate or moving. However, it is choices, both mundane and gripping, and where those choices have taken Mary Page Marlowe that make her life so intimate and surprisingly complicated. From Pulitzer-and Tony-winning playwright Tracy Letts comes a piece about the fragility of a moment and its effects on one's identity."--Back cover.

August

August PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458781410
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August; Osage County a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest - and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed.

Linda Vista (TCG Edition)

Linda Vista (TCG Edition) PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559369248
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
“Letts is a master of pitch-dark comedies that measure the grisliest depths of human behavior…Linda Vista is very funny, equally unsettling…An inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times Fifty-year-old Wheeler is moving into his own apartment after a nasty divorce. With a blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once you’ve already grown up.

Killer Joe

Killer Joe PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573627361
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Killer Cop Tony Law meets trailer-park trash Phil Nichol and Lizzie Roper in Tracy Letts' jaw-dropping smash-hit dark comedy. Breath-taking events. Truly shocking behaviour. Thrilling high-energy climax.

Superior Donuts

Superior Donuts PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822224365
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
THE STORY: Arthur Przybyszewski owns a decrepit donut shop in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Franco Wicks, a black teenager who is his only employee, wants to change the shop for the better. This comedy-drama by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-w

Man from Nebraska

Man from Nebraska PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810123479
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Encouraged by his minister, Ken decides to find himself and his faith by impulsively flying to London, where he navigates the new and somewhat dangerous realm of British counterculture. Tracy Letts's play dares to ask the big questions, revealing the hidden yearning and emotion that can spur eccentric behaviour in outwardly conventional people."--BOOK JACKET.

The Minutes

The Minutes PDF Author: Tracy Letts
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 9781636700052
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A searing new comedy from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of August: Osage County.

Theatre of the Unimpressed

Theatre of the Unimpressed PDF Author: Jordan Tannahill
Publisher: Coach House Books
ISBN: 177056411X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)