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Meet the 2022 Tony Nominees: THE MINUTES' Tracy Letts
May 17, 2024
BroadwayWorld is getting up close and personal with the nominees. Today we're studying up on Tracy Letts! Nominated for Best Play for The Minutes. watch the interview here!
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0:00
Hi, I'm Tracy Letts. I'm nominated for The Minutes
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It is Tony Day. It is great to see you, my friend. How are you? Great. Good
0:13
What is this day like for you? It's surreal and I don't take it for granted. These days are actually few and far between. So
0:23
you know, it's great. It's a wonderful acknowledgement. It's been such an interesting season because normally you write your play
0:33
you cast it, you go into rehearsal, and you open. So many plays, including The Minutes
0:38
and so many others have started to open, had a few previews, shut down. I mean
0:42
has it just been like a strange time? Oh, strange time is an understatement. It's been a time for everybody on this planet
0:54
it seems to me, unlike any other time that we've known. And for theater artists
0:59
it's been very challenging. I mean, we really had our art form was taken away from us for a
1:07
couple of years. It's devastated a lot of people, not just the economic devastation, but the
1:17
form of expression. It's really, it's been very sad. It's been a tough time
1:23
And so to think about the best of circumstances, it takes years to get a play to Broadway. I
1:29
started writing The Minutes in 2016. So add into those circumstances what we've been through in
1:36
the last couple of years. I mean, yeah, the first show we canceled for The Minutes was to show the
1:40
critics were coming to see. And so we were right on the cusp of opening the show. And then since
1:47
then, the court theater closed for renovations. We lost our space. Of course, when you shut down
1:55
you don't know how long you're going to be shut down for. I mean, August Osage County was shut
1:59
down during the stagehand strike in 2007, eight, lasted 18 days. We didn't know how long it was
2:09
going to last. Similarly here, I remember when we went down, people were like, how long do you think
2:13
we're gonna be out for? A week? Two weeks? Be back in a month? And here we are two years later. So yeah
2:18
very surreal time. What was it like being back in the rehearsal room again for that first time
2:23
with your company, with your director? I anticipated a lot of tears, and yet there was also
2:31
something about it that's just so familiar. The Minutes is a, there's a lot of old pros on the
2:39
stage in The Minutes. People have been doing this a long time. And so the feeling of the rehearsal room
2:44
is very well known to everybody. And everybody walked in and was like, oh, this is where we belong
2:49
and this is what we do. And people just fell immediately back into their normal roles. Rolled
2:55
up their sleeves and got to work. Audiences have fallen in love with your play. I mean, it's so
3:00
timely. I mean, was there something that, that in your mind said, oh, this is what the kind of play I
3:06
want to write when you sat down to write The Minutes? Not necessarily. I don't think I necessarily
3:11
knew what I had. I remember when I first finished it, Carrie, my wife, is always my first reader
3:19
and I handed it to her and said, I don't know what the, I don't know what this is. And she's like
3:24
I think it's my favorite play that you've written. And then Anna Shapiro had a similar reaction when
3:29
I showed it to her. I was like, oh, so let's get together and read it. And then it just sort of
3:33
evolved from there. It certainly is gratifying to perform. Audiences really seem to enjoy it
3:40
and they seem very, they're very engaged by the ideas. Sometimes they're infuriated by the ideas
3:47
Sometimes, right, there's, but it, they don't leave the theater talking about where they're
3:52
going to eat. They leave the theater talking about the show, and that's, that's the kind
3:56
of conversation we're hoping to start
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