Guest Costume Designer for Cornell College (Mt. Vernon, Iowa) upcoming production of August: Osage County with guest director, Jay Edelnant.
Their titles are firmly set in memory. Often, they are the great plays you saw or read. You know them: the How-Dysfunctional-Can-a-Family-Get plays. Start at the beginning: Agammemnon, Oedipus, Medea, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard the Third, Three Sisters, A Doll House, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Death of a Salesman, Little Foxes, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf .. .
What’s the attraction? Is it sitting in the dark thinking: “OMG, maybe I don’t have it so tough at home after all!” or even better: “How did they know that—that’s my mother up there!”
The appeal is enormous. As Tolstoy said: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And the Westons, of Osage County, Oklahoma not only echo the great themes of the towering unhappy families but make their unhappiness uniquely American and contemporary.
Tracy Letts won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 5 Tony Awards for August and followed it up with a Tony in 2012 for his performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. His early plays, Killer Joe and Bug are bloody and provocative. His later work, The Man from Nebraska, August, Superior Donuts (yes, the one ripped off for the TV sit-com) are more contemplative and evocative. You’ve seen him on Seinfeld, Homeland, The Big Short, and Divorce. He’s been a company member of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago since 2002.
You spent the holidays with your family. Spend May Day with the Westons.
