August: Osage County

August: Osage County
Original Broadway windowcard
Written by	Tracy Letts
Characters	Beverly Weston Violet Weston Barbara Fordham Ivy Weston Karen Weston Bill Fordham Jean Fordham Steve Heidebrecht Mattie Fae Aiken Charlie Aiken Little Charles Johnna Monevata Sheriff Deon Gilbeau
Date premiered	June 28, 2007
Place premiered	Steppenwolf Theatre Company Chicago, Illinois
Original language	English
Subject	A family is forced to confront its past and present.
Genre	Black comedy
Setting	A large country home outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma
Official site

August: Osage County is a black comedy play by Tracy Letts. It was the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on June 28, 2007, and closed on August 26, 2007. It had its Broadway debut at the Imperial Theater on December 4, 2007, and the production transferred to the Music Box Theatre on April 29, 2008. The Broadway show closed on June 28, 2009, after 648 performances and 18 previews.

The show made its UK Debut at London's National Theatre in November 2008. A US national tour began on July 24, 2009, with its first performance at Denver's Buell Theatre.

In 2013, it was adapted and brought to stage by Taiwanese Greenray Theatre, the story and characters remained unchanged, except the plot took place in a Taiwanese family.

The action takes place over the course of several weeks in August inside the three-story home of Beverly and Violet Weston outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

Prologue
The play opens with Beverly Weston, a once-famous poet, interviewing Johnna, a young Cheyenne woman, for a position as live-in cook and caregiver for his wife Violet, who is being treated for mouth cancer due to heavy cigarette use for most of her life. Violet is addicted to several different kinds of prescription drugs and exhibits paranoia and mood swings. Beverly, who freely admits that he is an alcoholic, lightly converses about Violet's current problems, most of which Beverly concedes are the result of personal demons too powerful to be cured by drugs. Violet enters the scene clearly affected by her drugs. After an incoherent and combative argument with Beverly, Violet returns upstairs. Beverly hires Johnna, lends her a book of TS Eliot's poetry, and continues to drink.

Act One
Several weeks later. Beverly Weston has not been seen for five days. Several family members have gathered in the house to provide support for Violet including her daughter Ivy, her sister Mattie Fae and Mattie Fae's husband Charlie. When Violet is not making calls attempting to track down her husband or popping pills, she spends the time sniping at her family, particularly Ivy, whom she criticizes for her mode of dress and lack of a romantic life. The news comes that Beverly's boat is missing, furthering the fear that he has committed suicide. Ivy's older sister Barbara arrives from Boulder, Colorado with her husband Bill and 14-year-old daughter Jean. Barbara has not visited her mother in several years, and has mixed feelings about returning to the house because of the confrontational nature of their relationship. They fall into an argument almost immediately, during which Violet accuses her of abandoning her family and breaking her father's heart.