by Leah Flowers
15 September 2024
Play Title
The Minutes
Playwright
Tracy Letts
Original Director
Anna D. Shapiro
First Performed
9 November 2017, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Letts)
Notable Perf.
17 April 2022, Broadway at Studio 54 (“Minutes, The”)
Setting
November 1st, the present. Big Cherry City Council meeting room, SD.
Play Structure
Climatic, with 1 flashback
Play Style
Comedy, with elements of Absurdism
Accolades
key: (nom) nominated, (fin) finalist, (win) win
2018 (fin) Pulitzer Prize – Pulitzer Prize for Drama
2022 (nom) Tony Award – Best Play
2022 (nom) Drama League Award – Best Play
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding New Broadway Play
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play – Austin Pendleton
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding Director of a Play – Anna D. Shapiro
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding Scenic Design – David Zinn
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding Lighting Design – Brian MacDevitt
2022 (nom) Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding Sound Design – Andre Pluess
Reviews
“As necessary as the end of The Minutes is, that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. There is a certain poetic justice to the finale because it represents one final appropriation. We’ve taken everything from these people, Letts seems to say, even their totems and customs. So the characters here are using those appropriations to celebrate their victory.” – Christopher Caggiano, The Arts Fuse
“He tips his hand slowly. ‘The Minutes’ is at first content merely to assemble, in a series of deft introductions, a hilarious portrait of the burghers of Big Cherry, a “wet sock of a town” whose main industry seems to be self-satisfaction.” – Jesse Green, The New York Times
Illuminating Quotes from the Play
“And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. – Black Elk”
“What’s the difference between semantics and nomenclature?”
“I love Abraham Lincoln. And violence.”
“The issue before this council is just what kind of community we want to live in. We have built this town on a fiction. And we perpetrate that fiction every day.”
Sources:
Caggiano, Christopher. “Theatre Review: ‘The Minutes’ on Broadway Beguiles and Befuddles.” The Arts Fuse, 29 April 2022, https://artsfuse.org/255454/theater-review-the-minutes-on-broadway-beguiles-and-befuddles/.
Green, Jesse. “Review: ‘The Minutes,’ an Official History of American Horror.” Critic’s Pick, The New York Times, New York Times Company, 17 April 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/17/theater/the-minutes-review.html.
Letts, Tracy. (2023). The Minutes. Acting Edition. Samuel French.
“Minutes, The.” Concord Theatricals, Samuel French Inc., https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/63942/the-minutes.