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A Mother So Bad You Can't Make Her Up

Tracy Letts was born in Oklahoma in 1965, and his experiences growing up there inspired his Tony-and-Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, August: Osage County.

It is the story of a damaged family, led by an abusive, drug-addicted matriarch, who was based on Letts’ own maternal grandmother. Letts told the New York Times that after he gave the script to his mother to read, she remarked, “You have been very kind to my mother.”

He went on to explain that if he had written the character more truthfully, it would be too much for the audience. In fact, according to The Guardian, during the London production of the play, Sir Patrick Stewart left after the first act because he found it too close to his own experience with an abusive parent.

Letts is an actor as well as a playwright, and a screenwriter, too—he adapted three of his own plays for the screen: Bug and Killer Joe, both directed by William Friedkin; and August: Osage County, directed by John Wells. In 2013, he won a Tony award for his portrayal of George in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He has also appeared on television, including on “Homeland,” “Prison Break” and “Seinfeld.”

August: Osage County is on stage at Wichita Community Theatre, through February 15th.

Sanda Moore Coleman received an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University in 1991. Since then, she has been the arts and community editor for The Martha's Vineyard Times, a teaching fellow at Harvard University, and an assistant editor at Image. In 2011, she received the Maureen Egan Writers Exchange prize for fiction from Poets & Writers magazine. She has spent more than 30 years performing, reviewing, and writing for theatre.