Keep the faith, Chicago theater lovers. If your trust in the integrity of Steppenwolf and Tracy Letts was in any way shaken by the tortured, execrable sitcom CBS rendered from their Chicago-based stage comedy Superior Donuts (despite their ultimate lack of involvement in the final product, save residuals), Letts wants you to rest assured that the old gang is still as scrappy and pugnacious as ever!



        “I couldn’t restrain myself . . . I said, ‘Jack, you fucking horse’s cock!’ He turned and he looked at me and I said, ‘You here to review this? Write that down, you son of a bitch! Fucking horse’s cock!’”

Q: You’re working with the director Dexter Bullard on this first one.

               A: It’s great to be back with Dexter. Both Anna [Shapiro] and I agreed, at almost exactly the same moment, that she was not the right director for the show. Dexter has the right sensibility.

Q: Very good then.

               A: You’re not going to ask me about the Jeff Committee?

Q: Should I ask you about the Jeff Committee? OK, what about the Jeff Committee?

               A: We are not inviting them to “Linda Vista.” I asked Steppenwolf to do this for me, and they agreed, and all of my collaborators agreed, because I asked them first. I am asking the [Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee] to pay for their tickets. They ask for, like, 150 seats on Friday and Saturday nights. That’s a lot of money, especially for theaters smaller than Steppenwolf. The Tonys are an organ of the American Theatre Wing. The Academy does a tremendous amount for the film industry. The Jeffs are more like a club to get free tickets. The Saints do a whole lot more for Chicago theater, and they have to usher. The Jeffs need to do some service, give away some scholarships.

Q: Is this to do with you not getting a lot of award recognition from them in the past?

               A: They don’t like me and I don’t like them. [Eds. note: Letts has been nominated three times as a actor and three as a playwright, winning best new work for August: Osage County.] Plus, it’s a sea of white faces. Our theater community has changed. The Jeff Committee hasn’t changed or diversified. Our community deserves a better service organization.



       But what’s most interesting about this gutsy decision to go public with his beef with the Jeffs’ institutional whiteness and take serious action to hold them accountable is the order in which he lays out his grievances, as carefully transcribed by Jones.



       Letts is right that the theater community has changed, taking major strides in the areas of diversity and inclusion. What’s more, Steppenwolf has helped lead the charge, inviting into its storied ensemble several outstanding artists of color in the past decade or so. Hopefully in time this will help correct the company’s steadfast adherence to the tradition of the magical negro, the nonwhite, mystically wizened outsider character who enriches the lives of the Caucasian protagonists in the foreground. Letts and his Pulitzer-winning ensemble brother Bruce Norris have both leaned heavily on this device in crucial moments in their careers, and high-profile Steppenwolf shows like 2014’s Broadway tryout of Airline Highway (out of whose 23-member local cast only six were included in the New York staging) and last winter’s well-received productions of Lucas Hnath’s The Christians have also indulged in this practice. But now that Letts is expanding his actor-playwright hyphenate to include altruist, this long-standing matter of crass tokenism will hopefully soon come to be resolved.