On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in a domestic terrorist attack. The tragedy hit particularly close to home for actor-playwright Tracy Letts, a native of Oklahoma. “I think it's still the greatest domestic terrorist attack we've ever had in the United States,” Letts said. “And it was not only surprising at the time — horrifying — but also just really scary to realize just how deep the roots of conspiracy [and] anti-government sentiment went, how passionately that was felt by a much larger percentage of the population than we knew. So I started to research that. I was curious about how we pass those ideas to one another.”
Letts’ investigation led him to learning about “folie a deux,” the psychological condition in which two or more individuals share a mental illness. The playwright wove these threads together to create “Bug,” a love story in which Agnes and Peter fall for each other, but nefarious theories from one begin to take hold of the other. “Bug,” which was only the second play by now Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Letts, premiered in London in 1996 and has enjoyed a few major productions since. Now, the psychological thriller is bowing for the first time on Broadway in a production from Manhattan Theatre Club that will officially open on Jan. 8, 2026.
The company of actors — who are reuniting after performing the play in a 2020 Steppenwolf Theatre Company run — all agree on Letts’ prescience. But actor Carrie Coon, who stars as Agnes and is married to Letts in real life, said Letts doesn’t claim that word. “Tracy would say that when good artists are seen as prescient in this way, they’re just paying attention to forces that are unfolding, whether it’s conscious or unconscious,” Coon told Broadway News. “He doesn’t take any credit for it. And yet, when people come to see this play, they’re not going to believe that it was written 30 years ago.”
“The language of it is so startling when you’re listening to it through the lens of where we are right now,” she continued. “And the audience has heard it in a new way every single time we’ve done it. I’m eager to see what they respond to in this round.”
