August: Osage County

Play

Writers: Tracy Letts

Overview

Show Information

Category
Play
Number of Acts
3
Tony Award®
Best Play 2008
First Produced
2007
Genres
Dark Comedy
Settings
Unit/Single Set
Time & Place
august 2007, in a home outside pawhuska, oklahoma
Cast Size
medium
Ideal for
professional theatre, large cast, College/University, Large Cast, Mature Audiences, Professional Theatre, Regional Theatre, Star Vehicle Female
Casting Notes
Mostly female cast
Includes mature adult, elderly, adult, young adult characters

Synopsis

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best New Play, August: Osage County centers around the Weston family, brought together after their patriarch, world-class poet and alcoholic Beverly Weston, disappears. The matriarch, Violet, depressed and addicted to pain pills and “truth-telling,” is joined by her three daughters and their problematic lovers, who harbor their own deep secrets, her sister Mattie Fae and her family, well-trained in the Weston family art of cruelty, and finally, the observer of the chaos, the young Cheyenne housekeeper Johnna, who was hired by Beverly just before his disappearance. Holed up in the large family estate in Osage County, Oklahoma, tensions heat up and boil over in the ruthless August heat. Bursting with humor, vivacity, and intelligence, August: Osage County is is both dense and funny, vicious and compassionate, enormous and unstoppable.

Lead Characters


August: Osage County guide sections