A Study Guide for Tracy Letts's "August: Osage County"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Tracy Letts's "August: Osage County", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781410393982

Book preview

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August: Osage County

Tracy Letts

2007

Introduction

August: Osage County, a three-act play by Tracy Letts, debuted in June 2007 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. The drama premiered on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre in December 2007 with the original Steppenwolf cast. August tells the story of the dysfunctional Weston family as they gather in their dilapidated farmhouse in rural Oklahoma after Beverly Weston, the family patriarch, goes missing. His wife, Violet, is a manipulative, spiteful, and drug-addicted woman who psychologically torments her three daughters, each of whom is going through her own crises. August: Osage County received rave reviews and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and five Tony Awards in 2008, including one for best play. The drama is considered a dark comedy for Letts's liberal use of humor, although bad language, vindictive behavior, drug abuse, and sexual themes figure just as prominently. It is also notable for its length—three and a half hours—and its large cast of thirteen characters.

When Barbara, Ivy, and Karen Weston gather at their parents' house in Osage County in the sweltering summer heat, Violet, who is suffering from cancer of the mouth, takes apparent delight in dwelling on their insecurities even as she sinks deeper into her addiction to painkillers. These conflicts ricochet outward to include Barbara's husband and teenage daughter; Violet's sister, Mattie Fae; and her husband and son. Letts based Violet Weston on his maternal grandmother, who herself descended into drug abuse and alcoholism after her husband committed suicide by drowning, as Beverly does in the play. Many critics favorably compared the play to Eugene O'Neill's 1956 masterpiece Long Day's Journey into Night, which is also about a dysfunctional family torn apart by a drug-addicted mother.

Letts is a successful Chicago-based playwright and actor who previously wrote the well-regarded play Man from Nebraska (2003), which garnered him a Pulitzer Prize nomination for best drama in 2004, but August: Osage County catapulted him into the top echelon of living playwrights for his ability to create a family drama in the same vein as twentiethcentury masters Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams. The play also had a successful run in London and toured nationally in the United States. Letts adapted August: Osage County as a screenplay that was produced in 2013, starring Meryl Streep as Violet Weston and Julia Roberts as her eldest daughter, Barbara. Both actors received Oscar nominations for their work.

Author Biography

Letts Was Born On July 4, 1965, In Tulsa, Oklahoma, And Grew Up In Durant, Oklahoma; His Parents Were Both College Instructors. His Father, Dennis Letts, Later In Life Became An Actor And Played Beverly Weston In The Chicago And Broadway Premieres Of August: Osage County, though he passed away just two months after the New York opening. Letts's mother, Billie, later in life became a best-selling author, penning the awardwinning 1995 novel Where the Heart Is, about a pregnant teenager who is abandoned by her boyfriend and gives birth in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart.

A couple of years after graduating from high school, Letts's desire for a career in the arts led him to Chicago, where he began his long association with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company as both an actor and playwright. His first play produced at Steppenwolf was 1993's Killer Joe, the story of a hit man hired to kill a woman so that her son would receive the insurance money. While some critics considered the play's characters stereotypical,