Tracy Letts Books In Order

Publication Order of Plays

Tracy Letts is a renowned actor, playwright, and screenwriter that has won numerous accolades for his writing efforts, this including a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

+Biography
Tracy Letts was born in 1965 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and raised in Durant. His father was an English Professor and aspiring actor called Dennis. His mother was a popular novelist and journalism professor by the names of Billie.

The author believes he was a late bloomer. While quite tall and heavy as an adult, Letts was such a small and awkward child. He was unathletic and largely uncomfortable in his small town (Durant) where his parents taught at the local college.

Some people think Letts portrays his childhood as a far darker experience than it actually was, and the author admits that, besides his grandmother’s knock-down drag-outs, life as a kid in Durant wasn’t that bad.

Tracy Letts believes his mother had a drastic impact on his decision to pursue writing. The woman was a bestselling novelist who spent most of her life and Letts’ childhood writing.

She was always experimenting with screenplays and the fact that none of her stories ever made it to the big or small screen never stopped her from writing. Though, after a while, she decided to focus her efforts on short stories.

Her big break came when she wrote ‘Where the Heart Is’, a novel that began as a short story but which was then expanded at the insistence of her agent. Billie imputed a lot of the literary success she eventually garnered to Oprah Winfrey who selected her novel for her book club, catapulting her into the bestseller arena.

By this point in time, the author’s father had retired from teaching, having turned his attention to acting. He was doing quite well when his wife’s literary career began to take off.

Tracy Letts has described his childhood household as a volatile one. The family was pretty close-knit but Letts’ parents had mercurial personalities, probably the result of Letts’ grandmother’s drug addiction and his grandfather’s eventual suicide.

The author doesn’t believe that his family did a good job of dealing with their baggage. A former student of Durant High School from where he graduated in the 1980s, Tracy Letts started working at an early age.

At first, he moved to Dallas after a short stint at Southeastern Oklahoma State and started waiting tables. He was eventually fortunate to land work in telemarketing. It was around that time that the author began to experiment with acting.

The move to Chicago at the age of 20 officially set Letts on the path to success in the entertainment arena. He spent more than a decade working at the Steppenwolf Theater Company.

His big break came when he wrote ‘Killer Joe’, a play about a family in Texas that sends an assassin to kill a relative. The project initially stalled because it was so violent and graphic that no theater company of significance would produce it.

Eventually, Letts had to undertake the project on his own, working with a few actors to give ‘Killer Joe’ its debut. The play was a big hit and it eventually made its way to New York City and London.

Its success drove Tracy Letts to write ‘Bug’ in 1996 even as he continued to act. Some people might remember the appearances the author made on shows like ‘Seinfeld’ in the years that followed.

Though, people only began to truly take Letts seriously when he wrote the play ‘The Man from Nebraska’ which not only veered away from the author’s characteristically gory elements but also earned Pulitzer Prize recognition.

‘August: Osage County’, Tracy Letts’ next project, actually won a Pulitzer Prize and a litany of Tony Awards. The play also steered clear of the blood and graphic violence the author was known for.

His star only continued to rise when plays like ‘Killer Joe’ and ‘August: Osage County’ received film adaptations.

Letts was never quite as renowned for his acting. This was despite appearing in productions like ‘American Buffalo’, ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, ‘Homeland’, and ‘The Big Short’ to mention but a few.

Tracy Letts believes that his projects garner so much attention because they feature real people struggling with real interpersonal challenges. It took the author longer than most to not only try his hand at writing but to also succeed.

But being a late bloomer worked in his favor. Letts didn’t go to college. He started working soon after he left high school and that gave him a tenacity that appears in his works.

He also accumulated many interesting experiences along the way. According to Letts, his most depressing moments were the weeks and months he spent in Los Angeles as an aspiring actor in his 30s.

It wasn’t the lack of work that told Letts he was in the wrong business but, rather, the dread he felt every time he landed an acting role. By the time he went back to Chicago and put his mind to the task of producing ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’, he knew that his destiny lay in writing.

+Bug
Agnes is a waitress who loves cocaine and isolation a little too much. Agnes and Peter, a soft-spoken Gulf War drifter, meet when Agnes’ lesbian friend introduces them.

Agnes was hiding out in her hotel trying to stay off her abusive ex-husband’s radar when she agreed to let Peter sleep on her floor. But then circumstances eventually drove Peter into Agnes’ bed, complicating matters considerably.

This was in light of Jerry’s determination to take his woman back and the bug problem that kept Agnes and Peter awake at night.

+Killer Joe
The Smith Family stands to collect a sizable financial reward but only if they can kill their Matriarch. It turns out that they are unwilling to do the deed themselves. So they hire a hit-man to perform the act on their behalf.

However, Ansel, the client, and his son Chris, a young dealer cannot afford to pay Joe Cooper for his services. So they come to an arrangement. Joe is happy to commit murder on behalf of Chris and Ansel, so long as they let him have Dottie, Chris’ innocent sister as payment.