August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

Mainstage Production directed by Ann Marie Pereth

October 25-November 17, 2019
Shows: 7:30 pm & 2 pm
The Usual Place
100 So. Maryland Pkwy., Las Vegas, NV 89101

Beverly Weston is missing.  His children descend upon the family home to help support their acerbic, pill-popping mother while they search for the once-famous poet.  Tempers are high, secrets are revealed and a family does everything it can to avoid healing in Lett’s hysterically touching portrait of life in the Midwest.

Producers’ Note (from the program)

Let’s talk about the plains.

That broad expanse of flatland and prairie lying west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rockies takes up nearly a quarter of the landmass of the United States. Decidedly NOT the Midwest, NOT the South, NOT the Northeast, the Great Plains defies regional specificity and definitive culture; Texas is part of the Great Plains, but so is Montana; half of Colorado and all of Nebraska are included, as well as most of Iowa; nearly all of Oklahoma. Flat and hot and mercurially fertile, the Great Plains can be as shocking in its emptiness as it is awesome in its unbroken vistas. But we had to have it: settlers to this enormous region pushed out untold numbers of native American communities and tribal populations, stage one of our 19th century doctrine of Manifest Destiny. That love affair didn’t last: since 1920, this tremendous swath of America’s heartland has lost nearly a third of its population resulting in thousands and thousands of acres left with a population of only 2 persons per square mile. In the 1930s it was known as “the Dust Bowl.”

The Weston family lives here – here, in this vast expanse of dry grass and steppe. The loneliness of the unending horizon is matched utterly by their shuttered home – sweltering and airless and in complete disarray. Some have fled this house, pushed out by a dysfunctional family dynamic and a history of casual substance abuse that turned a pair of once thriving, creative minds into self-imposed prisoners and jailers – in-patients, actually. Thrust together again by unexpected tragedy, this Oklahoma family quickly returns to the familiar routine of attack, parry, attack again. It’s recognizable, comfortable and, at the end of the day, terminal. And when they leave again – and leave they will, some of them – they’re simply mirroring the reality of this stark, deserted landscape.

For the Plains, such population loss is unsustainable. In fact, it’s been recently proposed to return approximately 140,000 square miles of this occasionally remote region to native prairie land.

JK and A-MP, October 2019

Behind the Curtain

APF is so excited to be producing August: Osage County by Tracy Letts.  We are so excited that we can’t wait for you to see what we are doing! And keep checking back.  We will be adding content regularly.

We want to thank our Scenic Designer, Eric A. Kroger, and Costume Designer, Hailey Eakle, for sharing their work in our behind-the-scenes preview.

Cast

Scenic Design

Costume Inspiration

Rehearsal Photos