Tracy Letts
Tracy Letts
Tracy Lettsis an American playwright, screenwriter and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County and a Tony Award for his portrayal of George in the revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth4 July 1965
CountryUnited States of America
certainly experience good helped helps roles
I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.
access afraid films great grew hot kid plays tin virginia
I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
hope playwright sustain
One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations.
action lives moving natural onstage screen spoken stage turn unnatural word
It's not a natural translation, transition, to take something from stage to screen. Onstage your action is communicated through the spoken word primarily, and on screen it's communicated through pictures. So it's always been kind of unnatural to take something that lives on the stage and turn it into moving pictures.
onstage people seen success theater town
I'm just a Chicago actor who's a playwright. Even with the success of 'August,' the people in town who come to our theater know me by sight, because they've seen me onstage so much.
movies
I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies.
great
I don't have a great face for camera.
box illinois lab next originally produced seat written
'Killer Joe' was originally written in 1991 and first produced in '93 at the Next Theater's Lab - a 40 seat black box theater in Evanston, Illinois - back when I was getting started. I was just 25 and I had been acting for awhile, but it was my first play and the one that really got me noticed, especially by Steppenwolf.
hard harder puts work
You don't work as hard to watch a movie. You work harder to watch a play, so what the audience puts into it is interesting.
convey images movies spoken stories visual word
The way we tell our stories on stage is that we use spoken word to convey action, and in movies, we use visual images to convey action.
bum carry everybody fear great hope lift script shoulders throw time
When I write a play, and we read it for the first time, the great fear is that everybody is going to say, 'You're a bum and you can't write. This stinks.' and throw the script in the garbage. The great hope is that they're all going to lift me up on their shoulders and carry me to the streets, singing, 'He's a genius, he's a genius!'
original people quite sure surprised
Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'm quite sure that any of the actors who did the original production of 'August' could have done the film of 'August.' I don't think any of them were particularly surprised when they didn't wind up doing the film.
certain director meat provides share shepherd
'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
fan preference
I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.