Onionheads

Synopsis

A tragi-comedy

This soulful play takes a raw, poetic look at the plight of onion farmers on the edge in the 1935 Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

The Tidwell brothers and the Bumpinmeyer sisters explore young love, hard times and loss of family as the sky turns black and the onions die.

When the sisters leave for Californee, a shocking truth hits the Tidwell farm and the boys are left with the relentless dust.

Devastated, they follow the girls to the "land of milk an' honey" where, months later in a migrant camp in the grip of the Great Depression, they find the sisters buried in poverty and prostitution.

The black secret of the Bumpinmeyer family is discovered.

Skins are peeled in layers to reveal the sweet and the sour.

Tragically, the dirt on these onion pickers never comes clean; the "land of plenty" grows nothing but the cries of dead hearts and broken Okies.

Meanwhile, the devil sits in his shack, laughing.

Winner of the 1999 American College Theatre Festival.