August: Osage County (TCG Edition)

Tracy Letts

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781559366090
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

“A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people.”— Time Out New York

“Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County is what O’Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama’s mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original.”— New York magazine

One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest—and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007.

Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.

ACT TWO

The house has been manifestly refreshed, presumably by Johnna’s hand. The dull, dusty finish has been replaced by the transparent gleam of function.

Of note:

The study has been reorganized. Stacks of paper are neater, books are shelved. The dining room table is set with the fine china, candles, a floral centerpiece. In a corner of the dining room, a “kid’s table,” with seating for two, is also set. The warm, clean kitchen now bubbles and steams, redolent of collard and kale.

At rise:

Three o’clock of an eternal Oklahoma afternoon. The body of Beverly Weston has just been buried.

Violet, relatively sober now, in a handsome modern black dress, stands in Beverly’s study, a bottle of pills in her hand.

Elsewhere in the house: Karen and Barbara are in the dining room. Johnna is in the kitchen.

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VIOLET: August . . . your month. Locusts are raging. “Summer psalm become summer wrath.” ’Course it’s only August out there. In here . . . who knows?

All right . . . okay. “The Carriage held but just Ourselves,” dum-de-dum . . . mm, best I got . . . Emily Dickinson’s all I got . . . something something, “Horse’s Heads Were Toward Eternity . . .”

(She takes a pill.)

That’s for me . . . one for me . . .

(She picks up the hardback copy of Meadowlark, flips to the dedication.)

“Dedicated to my Violet.” Put that one in marble.

(She drops the book on the desk. She takes a pill.)

For the girls, God love ’em. That’s all I can dedicate to you, sorry to say. Other than them . . . not one thing. No thing. You think I’ll weep for you? Think I’ll play that part, like we played the others?

(She takes a pill.)

You made your choice. You made this happen. You answer for this . . . not me. Not me. This is not mine.

(Lights crossfade to the dining room. Barbara and Karen, wearing black dresses, fold napkins, munch food from a relish tray, etc.)

KAREN: The present. Today, here and now. I think I spent so much of my early life thinking about what’s to come, y’know, who would I marry, would he be a lawyer or a football player, would he be dark-haired and good-looking and broad-shouldered. I spent a lot of time in that bedroom upstairs pretending my pillow was my husband and I’d ask him about his day at work and what was happening at the office, and did he like the dinner I made for him and where were we going to vacation that winter and he’d surprise me with tickets to Belize and we’d kiss—I mean I’d kiss my pillow, make out with my pillow, and then I’d tell him I’d been to the doctor that day and I’d found out I was pregnant. I know how pathetic all that sounds now, but it was innocent enough . . .

Then real life takes over because it always does—

BARBARA:—uh-huh—

KAREN:—and things work out differently than you’d planned. That pillow was a better husband than any real man I’d ever met; this parade of men fails to live up to your expectations, all of them so much less than Daddy or Bill (you know I always envied you finding Bill). And you punish yourself, tell yourself it’s your fault you can’t find a good one, you’ve only deluded yourself into thinking they’re better than they are. I don’t know how well you remember Andrew . . .

BARBARA: No, I remember.

KAREN: That’s the best example: here’s a guy I loved so intensely, and all the things he did wrong were just opportunities for me to make things right. So if he cheated on me or he called me a cunt, I’d think to myself, “No, you love him, you love him forever, and here’s an opportunity to make an adjustment in the way you view the world.” And I can’t say when the precise moment was that I looked in the mirror and said, “Okay, moron,” and walked out, but it kicked off this whole period of reflection, just swamped in this sticky recollection. How had I screwed it up, where’d I go wrong, and before you know it you can’t move forward, you’re just suspended there, you can’t move forward because you can’t stop thinking backward, I mean, you know . . . years! Years of punishment, self-loathing. And that’s when I got into all those books and discussion groups—

BARBARA: And Scientology, too, right, or something like that?—

KAREN: Yes, exactly, and finally one day, I threw it all out, I just said, “No, it’s me. It’s just me, here and now, with my music on the stereo and my glass of wine and Bloomers my cat, and I don’t need anything else, I can live my life with myself.” And I got my license, threw myself into my work, sold a lot of houses, and that’s when I met Steve. That’s how it happens, of course, you only really find it when you’re not looking for it, suddenly you turn around and there it is. And then the things you thought were so important aren’t really important. I mean, when I made out with my pillow, I never imagined Steve! Here he is, you know, this kinda country club Chamber of Commerce guy, ten years older than me, but a thinker, you know, someone who’s been around, and he’s just so good. He’s a good man and he’s good to me and he’s good for me.

BARBARA: That’s great, Karen—

KAREN: He’s got this great business and it’s because he has these great ideas and he’s unafraid to make his ideas realities, you know, he’s not afraid of doing. I think men on the whole are better at that than women, don’t you? Doing, just jumping in and doing, right or wro...