Celebrating Tracy Letts for a Day at Circle in the Square – front mezz junkies, Theater News

Frontmezzjunkies reports: Twelve Hours with Tracy Letts

By Ross

UPDATE NOTICE: Due to the dangerous weather slated to hit New York City today and, in the interest of keeping everyone safe, we have made the difficult decision to postpone our Twelve Hours with Tracy Letts Play Festival to tomorrow, February 23rd, at Circle in the Square Theater.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, there are events you simply have to admire from another place, wishing you could slip into a distant seat, even for an hour. Twelve Hours with Tracy Letts, taking place today, Monday, February 23rd at Circle in the Square Theatre, is one of those for me: the kind of gathering that reminds you why live theatre culture still feels communal, obsessive, and wonderfully alive.

Presented by Animus Theatre Company in association with the Circle in the Square Theatre School, the marathon reading festival today runs from 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM, celebrating the work of Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts through staged readings of August: Osage County, Killer Joe, Linda Vista, The Minutes, and Man from Nebraska. All proceeds benefit the school, still the only conservatory located inside a working Broadway theatre, making the day not only a tribute to a singular playwright but an investment in the next generation of artists learning their craft steps away from Times Square.

Letts has long occupied a fascinating space in American theatre. His plays feel both brutally intimate and darkly comic, populated by characters who speak with startling honesty even when they are lying to themselves. Whether exposing family rot in August: Osage County or peeling back civic politeness in The Minutes, his writing refuses comfort while remaining irresistibly human. They are plays that actors crave and audiences rarely forget, which makes the idea of encountering several of them in one uninterrupted theatrical marathon feel almost indulgent.

The lineup of participating performers only deepens that sense of occasion. Artists including Abigail Breslin, Jeffrey DeMunn, Beanie Feldstein, John Gallagher Jr., Carla Gugino, Adrienne Warren, John David Washington, Kara Young, Gina Gershon, Katrina Lenk, Matthew Lillard, Lily Rabe, Thomas Sadoski, and many more are donating their time throughout the day, turning the event into something that feels less like a reading series and more like a rolling celebration of contemporary American acting. Participation may shift as the hours unfold, but that unpredictability is part of the appeal. A staged reading carries the electricity of discovery, where performance exists briefly and then disappears.

That fleeting quality feels especially right for Letts. His plays thrive on immediacy, on the uncomfortable laughter that ripples through a room when recognition hits a little too close to home. To experience them in reading form, stripped of production polish and focused on language and actor, offers audiences a rare look at the bones of the work itself.

I will not be there today, which feels like missing a particularly good party thrown by people whose stories you love hearing. But there is something deeply reassuring in knowing it is happening anyway. A full day devoted to a living playwright, actors gathering simply to read, audiences drifting in and out of a Broadway theatre for twelve straight hours. It is the kind of event that shines a light on theatre and how it is not only about opening nights or reviews, but about artists and audiences choosing to spend precious time together inside a compelling story.

And if twelve hours with Tracy Letts sounds excessive, anyone who has sat spellbound through one of his plays already knows the truth: sometimes even that would not feel like enough.