by Tracy Letts
(No response. Violet enters the study. Barbara follows.)
He did this, though; this was his doing, not ours. Can you imagine anything more cruel, to make me responsible? And why, just to weaken me, just to make me prove my character? So no, I waited, I waited so I could get my hands on that safety deposit box, but I would have waited anyway. You want to show who’s stronger, Bev? Nobody is stronger than me, goddamn it. When nothing is left, when everything is gone and disappeared, I’ll be here. Who’s stronger now, you son-of-a-bitch?!
BARBARA: No, you’re right, Mom. You’re the strong one.
(Barbara kisses her mother . . . exits the study, returns to the living room. Violet calls after her.)
VIOLET: Barbara?
(Barbara grabs her purse, digs out rental car keys.)
Barbara?
(Barbara stands, listens to her mother.)
Barbara, please.
(Barbara exits the house.)
Please, Barbara. Please.
(Violet shuffles into the living room.)
Barbara? You in here?
(She crosses to the dining room.)
Ivy? Ivy, you here? Barb?
(She crosses to the kitchen.)
Barb? Ivy?
(She turns in a circle, disoriented, panicked. She crosses to the study.)
Bev?
(She reenters the living room, stumbles to the stereo, puts on Clapton . . . stares at the turntable as the album spins . . attacks the record player, rakes the needle across the album. She looks around, terrified, disoriented.)
Johnna?!
(She reels to the stairway, crawls up the stairs on all fours.)
Johnna, Johnna, Johnna . . .
(She arrives on the second floor. Johnna puts her plate of food aside and turns toward the stairs. Violet, on all fours, continues up the stairs to the attic. She arrives in Johnna’s room. She scrabbles into Johnna’s lap. Johnna holds Violet’s head, smoothes her hair, rocks her.)
And then you’re gone, and Beverly, and then you’re gone, and Barbara, and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone—
(Johnna quietly sings to Violet.)
JOHNNA: “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends . . .” VIOLET:—and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone, and then you’re gone—
(Blackout.)
END OF PLAY
TRACY LETTS is the author of Killer Joe, Bug and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered. His latest play is Superior Donuts.
August: Osage County is copyright © 2008 by Tracy Letts
August: Osage County is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156
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All the King’s Men is copyright © 1946 by Robert Penn Warren, Harvest Books, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, revised edition 1996. “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1952, 1971. The Dream Songs (contains His Toy, His Dream, His Rest) by John Berryman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2007. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a Back Bay Book, Little, Brown & Company, 1960, 1976.
This publication is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Letts, Tracy, 1965-
August: Osage County / by Tracy Letts.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-559-36609-0
1. Family—Drama. 2. Husband and wife—Drama. 3. Parent and adult
child—Drama. 4. Oklahoma—Drama. 5. Domestic drama. 6. Tragicomedy.
I. Title.
PS3612.E887A75 2007
812’.6—dc22 2007051952
