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
allow arc audiences characters ends love opportunity scenes
I like it when actors get an opportunity to chew into something. They love scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends - scenes that give an arc to their characters and allow audiences to get to know these people.
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!'
cut frequently movies plays
When books and plays are made into movies, they frequently want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks.
thank-god bed
Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
affinity greater knows
I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.
writing character shoes
Well, one of the things we're supposed to be able to do as playwrights is write from a place of empathy, get into another character's shoes and experience things both mundane and tragic. And people don't -- like me right now -- people aren't necessarily the most eloquent when trying to express their emotions. I guess I feel as a playwright that those people deserve a voice, too, a voice that isn't so articulate that they themselves can no longer identify with it.
hell entertaining ifs
If you're not entertaining, what the hell's the point?
giving-up giving soul
A certain giving up of control is good for the soul.
hell knows
I like Shakespeare, but I never know what the hell is going on.
like-you failing feels
If you feel like you're in control of everything, and then things aren't going well, you feel like you're failing.
writing next hell
I never know what the hell I'm writing about, I never know what the next thing I'm writing about is, I never have a plan.
cells people genetics
We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.
shade window nighttime
The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.
writing august should-have
After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.