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Bug: A Play
Set in a seedy Oklahoma City motel room, the play centers on the meeting between Agnes, a divorced waitress with a fondness for cocaine and isolation, and Peter, a soft-spoken Gulf War drifter introduced to her by her lesbian friend, R.C. Agnes stays at a hotel in hopes of avoiding her physically abusive ex-husband, Jerry, who was just released from prison. At first, she lets Peter sleep platonically on her floor, but not long after she promotes him to the bed. Matters become more complicated as Jerry eagerly returns to the woman he loves to beat her up, expecting to resume their relationship. On top of that, there s a hidden bug infestation problem that has both Agnes and Peter dealing with scathing welts and festering sores which has Peter believing this is the result of experiments conducted on him during his stay at an army hospital. Their fears soon escalate to paranoia, conspiracy theories and twisted psychological motives.
112 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 30, 2005
16 people are currently reading
1481 people want to read
About the author
Tracy Letts
15 books236 followersTracy Letts is an American playwright and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County.
Letts was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to best-selling author Billie Letts, of Where The Heart Is and The Honk And Holler Opening Soon fame, and the late college professor and actor Dennis Letts. His brother Shawn is a jazz musician and composer. He also has a brother Dana. Letts was raised in Durant, Oklahoma and graduated from Durant High School in the early 1980s. He moved to Dallas, where he waited tables and worked in telemarketing while starting as an actor. He acted in Jerry Flemmons' O Dammit!, which was part of a new playwrights series sponsored by Southern Methodist University.
Letts moved to Chicago at the age of 20, and worked for the next 11 years at Steppenwolf and Famous Door. He's still an active member of the Steppenwolf company today. He was a founding member of Bang Bang Spontaneous Theater, whose members included Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winner for Urinetown), Michael Shannon (Academy Award-nominee for Revolutionary Road), Paul Dillon, and Amy Pietz. In 1991, Letts wrote the play Killer Joe. Two years later, the play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Chicago, followed by the 29th Street Rep in NYC. Since then, Killer Joe has been performed in at least 15 countries in 12 languages.
In 2008, Letts won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It had premiered in Chicago in 2007, before moving to New York. It opened on Broadway in 2007 and ran into 2009.
His mother Billie Letts has said of his writing, "I try to be upbeat and funny. Everybody in Tracy's stories gets naked or dead." Letts' plays have been about people struggling with moral and spiritual questions. He says he was inspired by the plays of Tennessee Williams and the novels of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson. Letts considers sound to be a very strong storytelling tool for theater.
Letts was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to best-selling author Billie Letts, of Where The Heart Is and The Honk And Holler Opening Soon fame, and the late college professor and actor Dennis Letts. His brother Shawn is a jazz musician and composer. He also has a brother Dana. Letts was raised in Durant, Oklahoma and graduated from Durant High School in the early 1980s. He moved to Dallas, where he waited tables and worked in telemarketing while starting as an actor. He acted in Jerry Flemmons' O Dammit!, which was part of a new playwrights series sponsored by Southern Methodist University.
Letts moved to Chicago at the age of 20, and worked for the next 11 years at Steppenwolf and Famous Door. He's still an active member of the Steppenwolf company today. He was a founding member of Bang Bang Spontaneous Theater, whose members included Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winner for Urinetown), Michael Shannon (Academy Award-nominee for Revolutionary Road), Paul Dillon, and Amy Pietz. In 1991, Letts wrote the play Killer Joe. Two years later, the play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Chicago, followed by the 29th Street Rep in NYC. Since then, Killer Joe has been performed in at least 15 countries in 12 languages.
In 2008, Letts won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It had premiered in Chicago in 2007, before moving to New York. It opened on Broadway in 2007 and ran into 2009.
His mother Billie Letts has said of his writing, "I try to be upbeat and funny. Everybody in Tracy's stories gets naked or dead." Letts' plays have been about people struggling with moral and spiritual questions. He says he was inspired by the plays of Tennessee Williams and the novels of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson. Letts considers sound to be a very strong storytelling tool for theater.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
September 13, 2022
Tracy Letts, you're a madman, I love you. Your understanding of human loneliness and musical dialogue is unmatched. In "Bug" you take the reader to mesmerizing, bat-shit crazy places that no other writer would go to. Funny, too, how much of the monologue about conspiracy-related topics has been proven true. The disconnect between reality and delusion is illustrated here in a tragic love story that moves at a pace that slaps the reader around until finally a seizure-inducing finale destroys the reader--emotions shattered with even more questions of what is real and what is not arising. This is a masterstroke, a highly engaging work that's just as neurotic as its characters, just as frantic as the paranoia, and fully willing to go deep down the rabbit hole both psychologically and narratively. A daring, dark, fun work that must've been as much fun to write as it was to read.
November 22, 2010
Tracy Letts, Bug (Dramatist's Play Service, 2005)
Before even considering Bug, flip to the back page if you picked up the Dramatist's Play Service version. (The only one extant, as far as I know, but that may change.) The list of new plays they have for sale says that 2005 was indeed an amazing year for Dramatist's Play Service; sitting one above the other are Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, one of the best plays I've ever read, and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which of course everyone and their mother is now familiar with thanks to an Oscar-winning film adaptation in 2008. Pretty much anything else on that page is going to have a hard time standing up to those, right?
To put this in perspective, Bug was also adapted for film, back in 2006. It was made by one of Hollywood's most revered 1970s directors, William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Cruising, among others, came from Friedkin), and starring three of Hollywood's hottest properties of the nineties: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick, Jr. That's easily as much starpower as was put into the adaptation of Doubt, but Bug was released direct-to-video in America. I've been trying to find out why since I first saw the movie in 2008, and I still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer. There are countries where it was still running in theaters in 2009. That's three years on the big screen. Pretty obvious that the film adaptation of Bug was a raging success overseas. (For the record, it's a brilliant film, and it made my list of the hundred best of the last decade.)
And then there's the play. Friedkin and Letts, who also wrote the screen adaptation, were slavishly faithful; this is one of those rare cases where I can say “if you liked the movie, you'll like the book”, and vice-versa, with absolute conviction. It's sheer, unadulterated genius from beginning to end. It gets inside your head and sits there. It does to us what Peter does to Agnes, and it does it just shy of perfectly. (There are a few jumps that yank us back to reality; given how effective the play is when we're immersed in it, I'm guessing this was intentional on Letts' part.) There are all kinds of crazy in this play, and the all work.
Letts has, of course, gained a great deal more fame from his follow-up, August: Osage County, which is still touring the country. And that, too, is justified, as it's a fine, fine piece of drama in its own right, a sort of one-family rural Peyton Place gone horribly awry. But August: Osage County is a big, sprawling spectacle of thing that screams “look at me!” in its best Russ Meyer enunciation. Bug is small, intimate, and feels for all the world as if you're not supposed to be watching it. When you're done with this, you should feel like a voyeur. (Whether you're guilty or turned on is, of course, up to you.) It is also horrific, in the best sense of the word. You may find yourself scratching phantom itches. This is normal. **** ½
Before even considering Bug, flip to the back page if you picked up the Dramatist's Play Service version. (The only one extant, as far as I know, but that may change.) The list of new plays they have for sale says that 2005 was indeed an amazing year for Dramatist's Play Service; sitting one above the other are Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, one of the best plays I've ever read, and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which of course everyone and their mother is now familiar with thanks to an Oscar-winning film adaptation in 2008. Pretty much anything else on that page is going to have a hard time standing up to those, right?
To put this in perspective, Bug was also adapted for film, back in 2006. It was made by one of Hollywood's most revered 1970s directors, William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Cruising, among others, came from Friedkin), and starring three of Hollywood's hottest properties of the nineties: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick, Jr. That's easily as much starpower as was put into the adaptation of Doubt, but Bug was released direct-to-video in America. I've been trying to find out why since I first saw the movie in 2008, and I still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer. There are countries where it was still running in theaters in 2009. That's three years on the big screen. Pretty obvious that the film adaptation of Bug was a raging success overseas. (For the record, it's a brilliant film, and it made my list of the hundred best of the last decade.)
And then there's the play. Friedkin and Letts, who also wrote the screen adaptation, were slavishly faithful; this is one of those rare cases where I can say “if you liked the movie, you'll like the book”, and vice-versa, with absolute conviction. It's sheer, unadulterated genius from beginning to end. It gets inside your head and sits there. It does to us what Peter does to Agnes, and it does it just shy of perfectly. (There are a few jumps that yank us back to reality; given how effective the play is when we're immersed in it, I'm guessing this was intentional on Letts' part.) There are all kinds of crazy in this play, and the all work.
Letts has, of course, gained a great deal more fame from his follow-up, August: Osage County, which is still touring the country. And that, too, is justified, as it's a fine, fine piece of drama in its own right, a sort of one-family rural Peyton Place gone horribly awry. But August: Osage County is a big, sprawling spectacle of thing that screams “look at me!” in its best Russ Meyer enunciation. Bug is small, intimate, and feels for all the world as if you're not supposed to be watching it. When you're done with this, you should feel like a voyeur. (Whether you're guilty or turned on is, of course, up to you.) It is also horrific, in the best sense of the word. You may find yourself scratching phantom itches. This is normal. **** ½
October 21, 2016
WTF.
Gets its teeth in you and bites. Viciously.
Gets its teeth in you and bites. Viciously.
September 19, 2016
Creepy play. I think if PK Dick had written a play, it would have been very much like this.
May 31, 2022
Not at all what I was expecting from the author of August, Osage County but I really enjoyed it! This was a gritty and at times nauseating little play about mental illness and falling down rabbit holes. I didn’t understand a lot of the interactions between the characters but hey all were also on a lot of drugs so 🤷🏻♂️. There were some wild scenes in terms of imagery and overall created a great sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. Definitely worth the quick read.
July 22, 2024
Like Killer Joe, I'm left thinking, "well written, but so what?". I'll have to pick up August:Osage County at some point, but (because?) I'm having a hard time believing it's as good as the praise merits.
Followup: August Osage County is one of The Great American Plays.
Followup: August Osage County is one of The Great American Plays.
May 8, 2014
I was not happy to see this movie with Ashley Judd back in 2006. When I heard the title Bug, I thought of a man turning into a giant sized bug; a updated or poor man's The Fly. That's what my mother thought too when she dragged me to go see it with her.
After we saw it, my mother was disgruntled. It wasn't like she envisioned it at all. I, on the other hand, loved it precisely because it wasn't the way I envisioned it. It wasn't an overblown sci-fi movie but a quiet movie regarding the magnetic pull of paranoia.
I've been wanting to read Tracy Letts' Bug for a long time. Since I've read a prior play of his, August: Osage County, and loved it, it was time to read the play that started it all. Bug is about a 44 year-old woman named Agnes who lives in motel. She lives in fear of her ex-husband, Goss, who has just gotten released out on parole. She is still haunted by the disapperance of her 6 year old son, Lloyd, from a grocery store 10 years earlier.
One day, her friend, R.C., brings over a younger guy named Peter, an army vet, for some freebasing. Soon, Agnes and Peter get closer but odd things start to develop such as the sudden bug infestation in her room...
Bug packs an emotional punch for me. I really felt bad for Agnes. She's lonely, lost and distraught and Peter comes in with his "drama" and it envelopes her. Agnes was so desperate for an connection, a real emotional connection, that she overlooked Peter's downright insanity.
Peter's paranoia which, the dialogue was absolutely beautiful, was crazy. As an outsider looking in, I said to myself: Jeez, that's some nonsensical crazy you're spitting out there. However, Agnes is desperate and desperation overrides reason and logic. Paranoia eats desperation for breakfast.
After we saw it, my mother was disgruntled. It wasn't like she envisioned it at all. I, on the other hand, loved it precisely because it wasn't the way I envisioned it. It wasn't an overblown sci-fi movie but a quiet movie regarding the magnetic pull of paranoia.
I've been wanting to read Tracy Letts' Bug for a long time. Since I've read a prior play of his, August: Osage County, and loved it, it was time to read the play that started it all. Bug is about a 44 year-old woman named Agnes who lives in motel. She lives in fear of her ex-husband, Goss, who has just gotten released out on parole. She is still haunted by the disapperance of her 6 year old son, Lloyd, from a grocery store 10 years earlier.
One day, her friend, R.C., brings over a younger guy named Peter, an army vet, for some freebasing. Soon, Agnes and Peter get closer but odd things start to develop such as the sudden bug infestation in her room...
Bug packs an emotional punch for me. I really felt bad for Agnes. She's lonely, lost and distraught and Peter comes in with his "drama" and it envelopes her. Agnes was so desperate for an connection, a real emotional connection, that she overlooked Peter's downright insanity.
Peter's paranoia which, the dialogue was absolutely beautiful, was crazy. As an outsider looking in, I said to myself: Jeez, that's some nonsensical crazy you're spitting out there. However, Agnes is desperate and desperation overrides reason and logic. Paranoia eats desperation for breakfast.
September 2, 2011
Tracy Letts is one author I can call a mad genius. Letts plays show how relationships between certain people deteriorate and crumble. Tracy Letts' 'Bug' is no exception. In Tracy Letts play 'August: Osage County', he writes about a crazy deranged family that, as the play goes on, falls apart. In Tracy Letts' 'Bug' , the deterioration is in the characters minds and their sense of reality. In 'Bug', both characters Agnes and Peter are at a rock bottom time in their life. As the play continues, Peter and Agnes' sense of reality begins to decay, similarly to the motel room where they are living. As Peter's idea of the bugs infesting their motel room grows like a plague, Agnes and Peter's paranoia spins out of control. I really enjoyed this wild and deranged play.
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February 3, 2024The subject was interesting but maybe my problem with these type of psychological plays is that theres so much left unexplained due to the limitations of plays especially when theyre written to be performed on stage.
Like i want to know what has happened to peter and more about his background
More about agness and goss their relationship their lost child
I wanna know more about R.C and her personality
This whole play was like one or two chapters of a really good book and ill be desperate to read it.
Like i want to know what has happened to peter and more about his background
More about agness and goss their relationship their lost child
I wanna know more about R.C and her personality
This whole play was like one or two chapters of a really good book and ill be desperate to read it.
April 16, 2016
This reminded me of Shepard's "God of Hell." I hope that in 20 years we will look back at our national paranoia as something terribly wrong and even amusing. But we've been at it so long that it's never going to be funny, and our paranoia has become so ingrained in the national consciousness that there's probably no turning back. Americans -- both perpetrators and victims -- are some truly sick motherfuckers. And THAT is what this play is all about.
December 28, 2017
This play makes me itch. Letts knows how to get under your skin and into your mind - feeding the paranoia and fears that live in the dark. Flawed and likable characters, a seedy motel room, government conspiracies, dental extractions, and an infestation - This is a wild play and I'd love direct it.
February 15, 2013
Wow.
A fast-paced and turbulent page turner that kept me guessing until the very end. Rich characters and an engrossing and twisted plot make this one of the most exciting and brutal plays I've read to date.
A fast-paced and turbulent page turner that kept me guessing until the very end. Rich characters and an engrossing and twisted plot make this one of the most exciting and brutal plays I've read to date.
January 1, 2022
Infecting… pun intended. This one will stay with me for a while. What’s real, what’s not? When does our delusion become all consuming, and when do we let it drag others down with us?
January 31, 2022
Wow! I didn’t know plays could be written this way! So good!
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July 25, 2025This is bleak and great. A conspiracy theory paranoid horror thriller. Looking forward to seeing the movie.
January 4, 2024
when you want to be loved so bad you join in on a bug delusion
May 28, 2022
Of the two Tracy Letts I have read, I think I actually preferred this one, felt tighter
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March 11, 2023well now I’m itchy
August 13, 2011
This took me a little while to get in to it, and for a few pages, I considered putting it down. It just didn't hold my interest. But as i read on, the entangled relationship and the paranoia had me interested.
"Psycho-thriller" is a great term for this play (it's used on the back cover of my edition) and one of the things that I found exciting was the possibilities of the way to play this.
This is the third play I've read by Tracy Letts and I think he's definitely a gifted theatrical voice. I'd gladly read or see any of his work and will continue to his plays as subject matter in my theatre classes.
Recommended.
"Psycho-thriller" is a great term for this play (it's used on the back cover of my edition) and one of the things that I found exciting was the possibilities of the way to play this.
This is the third play I've read by Tracy Letts and I think he's definitely a gifted theatrical voice. I'd gladly read or see any of his work and will continue to his plays as subject matter in my theatre classes.
Recommended.
May 18, 2017
In a word, this was unpleasant. It's set entirely in a grubby motel room where a war veteran pulls a woman into his delusions, with horrible results. It is (probably) very well-written, but in truth, it fell victim one too many times to that jagged, ambiguous, fragmented, and (probably) very dark writing that too much arthouse theatre often falls into, rather than being overly insightful. It's probably worth mentioning that I've never seen this play onstage. Nevertheless, this is definitely scarier than at least 60% of horror movies out there.
May 21, 2023
i really like this play. i performed agnes’ final monologue for my acting class, and i think it is incredibly well written. i like the characters, and the pacing and development of agnes’ slow descent into madness. the only thing i (personally) am missing is more insight into what happened to lloyd, as well as agnes’ familial history. i developed a backstory for agnes after psychoanalyzing her (one that i think fits very well), but i would have loved to be given actual context by the playwright.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2012
A disturbing look at how a psyche cracks once it has found the right fixation. The characters in Bug seem intent on heading towards their destruction, finding solace in insane answers to life's disappointments and tragedies. It's well-crafted work by Letts, and while his brand of gross-out theatre isn't a pet favorite of mine, I was thrilled by the circumstances and character choices he showcased here.
December 23, 2021
cocaine is a helluva drug
a whole lot of conspiracies bundled into one short, gruesome package. read this after I finished “Aberration In The Heartland Of The Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh”, and these together really make you think about how exhausting it must be to do the mental gymnastics and magical thinking necessary to be a paranoid person/conspiracy theorist. i simply do not have the time or patience to believe that the government is anything more than incompetent, sorry lol
a whole lot of conspiracies bundled into one short, gruesome package. read this after I finished “Aberration In The Heartland Of The Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh”, and these together really make you think about how exhausting it must be to do the mental gymnastics and magical thinking necessary to be a paranoid person/conspiracy theorist. i simply do not have the time or patience to believe that the government is anything more than incompetent, sorry lol
August 26, 2011
I LOVE THIS PLAY! Nothing like August Osage County- it's short, straight forward yet when it turns left you are thinking the whole time it'll go straight and that you know where it's going but you really never do, so it keeps you on your toes. I got to do a scene from it with a great friend & it was really fun getting all that insanity out on stage... Oh, but for some people it's disturbing...
July 23, 2016
A Tracy Letts play. Less violent than Killer Joe, but still deals with drugs and insanity. Premise is a young man who feels he is being controlled by others through bugs and implanted bug sacs.
Letts has been extremely lucky getting his sordid plays turned into movies. A Tracy Letts play is not the average play - expect unique and gutteral.
Letts has been extremely lucky getting his sordid plays turned into movies. A Tracy Letts play is not the average play - expect unique and gutteral.
April 24, 2007
please please please try to see this play. there is a movie version (starring the original cast) coming out sometime this year, but nothing beats watching a man pull out a molar with a pair of pliers on stage.
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December 27, 2009Kind of violent, but I loved how Bug sinks deeper and deeper into paranoia. A gripping depiction of the conspiracy theory mindset.
Also saw the movie, which was pretty faithful and pretty good (not flashy and high-budget, but that would destroy the atmosphere).
Also saw the movie, which was pretty faithful and pretty good (not flashy and high-budget, but that would destroy the atmosphere).
June 14, 2011
Oh man. This play is intense. It is definitely not for the faint of heart. My favorite thing about this is that you do not know how much of the story is reality and how much of it is all in the characters' heads. Letts does a brilliant job.
March 12, 2013
Great play, it's creepy and filled with paranoia. It is very subtle in the way that the ending kind of sneaks up on you. I had to read this for my college lit class and I was so glad my teacher assigned it, I'm filing it into my favorites
Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews