Tracy Letts on writing his play and then having to act in it
18.05.2022 - 17:35
/ abcnews.go.com
NEW YORK -- Playwright and actor Tracy Letts was inspired to write his latest Tony Award-nominated play while watching one of those old black-and-white Frankenstein movies.It wasn't the hideous monster or its wide-eyed creator that drew his attention. It was the single-mindedness of the town's angry villagers.“The villagers always appear with their pitchforks and torches and they’re completely unified.
That really struck me,” he said. "I thought, 'There must have been a meeting before this among the villagers where one of the villagers voiced dissent and said, ‘No, we should not go after the monster.
I think this is the wrong idea for us to form a vigilante mob and kill the monster.’”That initial creative impulse eventually resulted in “The Minutes,” a powerful play that uses a city council meeting to expose delusions at the dark heart of American history.The Frankenstein villagers have been recast as elected leaders of the fictional Pennsylvania town of Big Cherry, who resolutely refuse to acknowledge the town's horrific past. For Letts, that willful blindness is a national monster.“We’re not going to address the ills that plague this country until we start to deal with the underlying infection, which is, of course, genocide of Native American people and slavery,” says Letts.
“If you can’t even talk about it, we’re never going to really get it.”Letts' play, first written in 2016, seemed to anticipate the subsequent national debates over Confederate statues, critical race theory and the backlash over textbooks that include the lingering consequences of slavery.“At each stage, the play has only become more and more true. To the point that when we first did it, a lot of people were like, ‘Yeah, that’s kind of weird.’ And
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