Dear and Patient ‘Osage in NY’ Followers
Posted by Jeff Perry on 1/24/2008
The giddy highs of opening night and crazy-good reviews had us floating for a couple weeks before reality set back in…In the world of challenges we’ve been fighting cast colds, flu, throat infections, stomach flus for 2 or 3 weeks…and many of us felt the first long run repetition “wall,” which I guess I would describe as a mental/emotional resistance to successfully pretending that you don’t know the story you are telling—because of course one of the fundamental tasks for us actors is to trick our brains and hearts into nightly innocence as to what will ensue…So, for a bit there, many or most of us were hanging on by our fingernails physically, emotionally and mentally to try and survive–much less fulfill–this beautiful play 8 times a week…BUT, I think for the most part we are all feeling better on all fronts and having fun again…thank god!
Francis Guinan, my daughter Zoe and I had a great 4 hr catch up with John Malkovich and his wife Nicole last Sunday night after they saw the play…..He was deeply, deeply moved by Osage, and had a very similar reaction as our fellow Steppenwolfers Martha Plimpton, stage manager Malcolm Ewen and Eric Simonson (writer and director of our next subscription play Carter’s Way) a nite or two before…John said an interesting thing– that what was indelibly greatest to him in Steppenwolf production highs was in big evidence in Osage — and it is when the humor, pain and compassion are strangely not separate entities but in simultaneous alchemy…or another utterance in the same vein from him was “Tracy does something very rare in that he makes it so funny, it’s moving…”
The artistic backstage visits continue with Ms. Meryl Streep and her three daughters stopping back with congrats Sunday night….whew, deeply sweet to have seemingly impressed one of our professions’ geniuses…
…More as soon as I can…
February 26th, 2008 at 3:54 am
I’m not certain this blog is the appropriate manner in which to do this, but I would like to express my very deepest condolences to everyone who worked with, performed with, or was touched in any way by Dennis Letts. I only witnessed his performance, never knew him personally, but everything I’ve heard or read about him speaks volumes to me about how much he will be missed.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Trace–
I heard the sad news of your father’s all-too-early passing from Mike, left a voice-mail for you, but obviously, didn’t expect a response, given all that was going on with you and yours at the time.
But, even belatedly, I want to express not only my condolences, but also my thoughts with regard to Dennis, and you:
I talked with your dad only a couple of times, when he came out to find us talking and smoking (shame on both of us, after we each successfully quit that lovely, horrid temptsress) outside the theatre after his fabulous performance (it’s not every actor who can steal scenes from Deanna Dugan, or even match her, beat for beat) in August: Osage County…It’s not every son who can tailor a role (even one based, at least in part, on his father) a role for his dad that takes him to Steppenwolf, Broadway and theatrical immotality (none of us who saw it will ever forget his pitch-perfect portrayal, his gentle, self-deprecating humor, or his soft Oklahoma dwarl). You did each other proud!
I wish that I could have been there (for your sake and my own) through what must have been a terrible, bittersweet time. I remember well your tear- and laughter-filled (often simultaneously)
“good-bye” to Holly with us at A Red Orchid, where she gave her last, amazing, undying –(mesmerizing all who saw her in the very sexy death-thoes of the sexy, villainous, poisoned
Countessa)–performance in Chicago, and how we remembered and mourned that she had not lived to reprise her role in Killer Joe off-Broadway (Amanda Plummer couldn’t hold a candle), as Mike, Guy, and I stood (again, smoking) both immensely proud and terribly heart-broken, on the NYC streets after opening. After all, she loved the Kentucky-fried Chicken scene, wouldn’t let you cut it, thus demonstrating forever and for always, that she was the girl for you (as is Nicole, now; I still think, and told you and them, self-admitted –cp. your interview with Martin McDougal in the Steppenwolf Forum–cruel sadistic bastard that you can be to your women/actors, you don’t deserve them…so I hope that, as promised, you’re still working on that!). Would that she had lived to see her Tracy now! Of course, she’s probably wowing the Gods, as we speak!
I am glad, as you write in memorial to Dennis, that he (and you) were able to redeem, at least in small part, that painful loss, for you, for us, who love you, and for the world, which misses not only their characters, but their character and joy in the grotesque naturalism of the dramatic black comedy that we call love and life.
love,
Carl