It’s a landmark year for LOOK Musical Theatre, and theatergoers are the ones who benefit. LOOK opens its 30th season with that meddlesome matchmaker Dolly Levi from Yonkers in Hello, Dolly!, the 1964 Broadway hit and comedy that has become a favorite for many generations. The show opens LOOK’s annual summer season with a June 14-30 run, which also marks the beginning of the SummerStage Festival, produced June-July by the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust. The LOOK lineup fills out with The Drowsy Chaperone, a contemporary musical with a sharp nod to those great comedies of the 1920s complete with romance, a little adventure and plenty of madcap. It runs June 21-30. Finally, there’s Side by Side by Sondheim, a show running June 16, 23 and 28 and filled with the most memorable and clever numbers lyricist Stephen Sondheim has turned out to date. All three shows will be at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, 111 E. Second St. Tickets are $32 per show. Go to www.looktheatre.org for the show schedule and to learn more about the company’s history.

Friday, June 14-Saturday, June 15

Want to test out your cat fishing skills? No, you won’t need your computer and a fake screen name like the disgraced Manti Te’o. For Claremore’s “Battle of the Big Cats, Route 66’s Richest Noodlin’ Showdown,” all you need is your hands! Noodling is the popular sport of catching a catfish with bare hands. This tournament is for all ages. A big prize of $5,000 goes to the contestant with the largest fish. Deadline for registration is noon on Wednesday, June 12. Fish must be weighed by 6 p.m. Saturday, June 15, at the Claremore Expo Center, 400 S. Veterans Parkway. Also, check out the trade show from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Come for the entertainment as well as lunch with Claremore’s firefighters. Catfish and great side dishes will be served for $5-$8. For more information or to register for the tournament, visit www.visitclaremore.org or call 918.343.8688.

Friday, June 14-Saturday, June 15

Music and great food are the hallmarks of the sizzling Bricktown Blues & BBQ Festival, Friday, June 14, and Saturday, June 15, on the corner of Sheridan and Oklahoma avenues in Oklahoma City's lively Bricktown District. Decked with outdoor stages and plenty of vendors with spicy, sweet vittles, the festival only needs that final ingredient – festivalgoers – to make it a success. Blues & BBQ has yet to fail. Look for Steve Pryor, Shane Henry, Otis Watkins and others. Hours are 5 p.m.-midnight on Friday and noon to midnight Saturday. Admission is free. For more, go to www.bricktownokc.com.

Saturday, June 15, 8 p.m.

Mountain Sprout looks exactly like the way its music sounds – rowdy bluegrass with “redneck hippie” word play. The popular regional band from Eureka Springs, Ark., is back in Tulsa for another round of lyrical moonshine from the backwoods hive. Look for Mountain Sprout at the Shrine, 112 E. 18th St., Tulsa. Show is at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 15, with doors opening an hour before. Tickets are $6-$10, available at www.tulsashrine.com.

Saturday, June 15, 7:30 p.m.

Hillsong United has played at amazing venues all over America, and the Chesapeake Energy Arena is about to be added to the list. The contemporary Christian rock band is bringing its “Welcome Zion Tour” to 100 W. Reno Ave., Oklahoma City, on Saturday, June 15. The summer tour celebrates the 2013 release of the band's album Zion, which debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 5. The album contains songs of worship such as Relentless and Open Arms. This Australian band combines rock melodies with passionate lyrics for a live experience that a music lover can truly enjoy. Show is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tickets ($23-$42) are on sale at www.chesapeakearena.com.

Opens Saturday, June 15

After Gordon “Pawnee Bill” Lillie opened his first Wild West show in 1888, he took his stunt-laden, entertaining vision of the American West on the road to numerous cities around the world. These days, audiences head for Pawnee, Okla., for Pawnee Bill’s Original Wild West Show, an annual summer attraction filled with trick shooters, trick riders, Native American powwow dancers, horses, chuck wagons and more hearkening back to the era of a quickly modernizing country looking back to its own rugged past.

This year’s show opens at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 15, with two more dates on June 22 and 29 at the Pawnee Bill Ranch, 1141 Pawnee Bill Road in Pawnee. If you get to town early, make sure to catch the Wild West show cast parade at 4 p.m. and check out the museum and mansion from 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. on show days. Also look for a medicine show, blacksmiths, gunfighter and sharp shooter demonstrations and more prior to the show. Regular tickets are $8-$14 and box seats are $125-$150 per box depending on if tickets are purchased in advance or on show days. The Friends of the Pawnee Bill Ranch Association will also serve a meal at 5 p.m. Call 918.762.2513 for specific details and to purchase tickets. More about the show is available at www.okhistory.org.

Friday, June 14-Saturday, June 15

Wood carvers from across the region head to Broken Arrow for the annual Wood Carvers World exposition featuring carvers, woodturners, burners and artists in demonstrations. Look for seminars for beginners as well as displays of various wood art forms and influences by carvers from the Eastern Oklahoma Woodcarvers Association and others from an eight-state area. Renowned artist Tulsan Rusty Johnson is this year’s featured artist at the Union Eighth Grade Center, 6501 S. Garnett Road, in Broken Arrow. For more, call 918.251.8734 or 918.408.3481.

Friday, June 14-Saturday, June 15

The Tulsa Convention Center is set to host the FIVB World League Men’s Volleyball event this weekend. A league full of tough competition and talent from all over the world, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) brings together national teams to play for a spot in the final game and the grand prize of $1 million. Coach John Speraw and the U.S. Men’s National Team will host in Tulsa two matches with France’s National Team in Pool A play. Pool A is reserved for the top teams in the league and includes those from Argentina, Brazil, Poland and Bulgaria. Last year, the U.S men’s volleyball team placed fifth in London at the 2012 Olympics. U.S. and France will face off on Friday, June 14-Saturday, June 15, each day at 7 p.m. Admission is $12-$22 a day or $22-$42 for both days. The convention center is located at 100 Civic Center in downtown Tulsa. Purchase tickets and learn more at www.bokcenter.com.

Ends Saturday, June 15

Jim Thorpe inspired millions with his athletic ability and moxie as an Olympic hero and as a professional football and baseball player. More than 100 years after he won Olympic gold in track’s pentathlon and decathlon, the Sac and Fox/Potawatomi athlete inspires new generations of American Indian youth to pursue sports excellence. The Jim Thorpe Native American Games, which began Sunday, June 9, continues through Saturday, June 15, with competitions in basketball, softball, tennis, beach volleyball, martial arts, football and stickball. Events take place at Oklahoma City University, 2501 N Blackwelder Ave., and at other locations in the OKC area. For a schedule and more information, go online to www.jimthorpegames.com.

Editor's note: This interview was originally published in Dec., 2008.

As

the final curtain falls on 2008, the story of Tracy Letts sounds more like a character out of Dickensian England than the actual tale of a strapping Oklahoma boy who helped bolster the state’s image as being the native home to some of this country’s most celebrated writers.  

“It’s really just been the best of times, and the worst of times – sometimes, at the same time,” says the 43-year-old actor and playwright. “So, very surreal, and nothing I ever want to go through again.”

In a prize-winning year that yeilded the 2008 Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play August: Osage County – a riveting dissection of addiction and its impact on a calamitously dysfunctional Oklahoma family – Letts’ towering triumphs have been dampered by a gnawingly deep sorrow. Last February, his father, Dennis Letts – who played the familial patriarch in the Broadway production – died after a six-month battle with cancer.

“The overwhelming sensations, memories of the last 12 months, is all tied in to my father’s death,” Letts says. “I’ve shared this with people who have lost a parent and they’ve said to me, ‘Gee, the first year after my parent died, I don’t remember anything, my mind is a jumble, it’s awash with strange memories, I can’t remember dates.

“And yet, the year I’ve gone through is really the pinnacle of what a playwright can experience in this country. So, I’ve got all these demarcations of, ‘Oh, that’s when I won the Pulitzer,’ which was an incredibly difficult day because it’s all relative again, to my father’s passing. It’s just very strange. Friends of mine have said to me, ‘it’s Greek.’”

As the son of two college English professors (his mother is best-selling author, Billie Letts) who taught at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, where the Tulsa-born Letts was raised, the aspiring actor/playwright became entrenched in an artistic microcosm, where his budding ability to blend a sharply attuned understanding of reality with vivid imagination was nurtured.

“My parents are very creative people,” says Letts. “I think the first play I ever saw was To Kill a Mockingbird, with my father playing Atticus, probably when I was 10 years old or so. They always encouraged us to pursue creative endeavors and really supported the artist in me and my brother, Shawn, who is a musician.”   

“I’m not telling stories that people in my family don’t know. There’s a history of addiction in my family and in a lot of families, and I pull from that history liberally."

A few years after leaving Durant, Letts moved to Chicago (where he still resides) and launched a distinguished acting career, performing at the esteemed Steppenwolf Theatre, eventually becoming a member of its permanent ensemble. His passion for acting escalated into a desire to not only play the parts, but create and write them as well. His works include Killer Joe, Man from Nebraska (for which he received his first nomination for a Pulitzer), Bug and most recently, Superior Donuts.

It was during the years while penning his earlier creations that Letts realized his growing reliance on alcohol and drugs was becoming a full-fledged addiction – a frequent theme in his plays – and an inheritance from a family that was no stranger to indulging self-destructive appetites.     

“I’m not telling stories that people in my family don’t know,” he says. “There’s a history of addiction in my family and in a lot of families, and I pull from that history liberally. I certainly do in August: Osage County. It’s one of the ways I deal with the demons of addiction with my family.”

With 15 years of sobriety now under his belt, Letts is able to put into broader perspective the life-affirming results cultivated from what he terms his “lost years,” which gave way to an era of spectacular acclaim.

“I think what helped me get sober was the realization that there was nothing I could accomplish with drinking and drugs that hadn’t already been accomplished, in the sense that if the ultimate goal there is to kill yourself, a lot of people have done it,” he says. “And when you write something that is so individual – which is one of the great things about writing – you’ve written something that nobody else could possibly have written and it’s very particular to that individual. So, you write a play like August: Osage County, and whatever one thinks about it, I can look at it and say, ‘Well, that’s all me. That’s mine.’ I don’t think drinking and drugging would have gotten me to that point.”

Offsetting a hard-fought level of maturity and inner control over the negative forces that often short-circuit many would-be talented artists, Letts’ reveals a pronounced sense of poignancy and wit when he recollects winning an award for which few can even dream of being considered.

“You know, I was a finalist in 2003 for my play Man from Nebraska,” Letts says, adding a laugh. “And I so love the way the Pulitzer committee does it because everything is done before you get a phone call. So when you get the call, for instance in 2003, it’s basically, ‘Congratulations! You lost!’ You know, you don’t even know you’re nominated, so by the time they call you and you’ve already lost, the thing is, you’re so delighted to hear that you were even nominated.” 

“And it was a similar kind of thing with August,” Letts says. “They called and said ‘Congratulations! You won!’ It was all over. I was with my girlfriend. We celebrated. I cried. Again, so much of it was about my father. I told my mother – she was the first person I called. We had a good long cry about it. But very exciting. I mean, it’s just nothing you can work toward. It’s nothing you can plan for. It’s not an award one can sort of try to win. You write a play and you hope people will like it. And then to get that kind of acknowledgement, it’s very confirming in a way.”

In an industry Letts acknowledges can be “a bit dog-eat-dog,” one might think that with his extraordinary achievements and the subsequent, complementary accolades of late, the award winner might be feeding his ego rather than feeling humble and gratified. 

“I have to say as honored as I am by the awards, I don’t consider them the great accomplishments,” he says. “The great accomplishment is the play itself or the work itself. The awards are delicious gravy that you get in addition to the work. That’s somebody else making a determination about you. It feels great.” 

So what is the most significant change in a year that has propelled Letts from respected dramatist to world-acclaimed playwright?

“I suppose the biggest difference is an internal one, where your shoulders drop and the chip on your shoulder sort of falls away and you feel you have less to prove, and that’s a very good feeling, feeling like I don’t have to prove anything anymore. I can relax.”