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Tracy Letts and "August: Osage County"

By Rich Fisher

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-881701.mp3

Tulsa, Oklahoma – Today, we feature a conversation with playwright, actor, and Oklahoma native Tracy Letts. Letts is the author of "August: Osage County," which recently won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play --- and which will soon be staged at the Tulsa PAC, from January 26th through January 31st. (For more information on this production, including ticket information, please call 596-7111.) Staged by Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre, and starring Academy Award-winner Estelle Parsons, "August: Osage County" is a vast, sweeping American drama of strong characters, classic themes, and brutal honesty --- as moving and powerful as it is funny and familiar --- that has been universally acclaimed. The New York Times, for example, called it "flat-out, without qualification, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years." Primarily, this play tells the story of an extended family coming together in the summertime at their rural Oklahoma home when their alcoholic father goes missing. As Letts tells our host Rich Fisher, he wasn't intending to create an autobiographical work, although some of the specifics in the play do come out of his own childhood in Durant, Oklahoma.