The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas by Andrew Farkas
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*Sold as a tête-bêche with Isabel Sobral Campos' Ghost Gravity
*Special pre-sale price until June 9, 2026
Throughout the course of The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas, we are asked to question whether the events of each act happened in some form at some time to the protagonists, Arty and Auggie, or if those events were dreams of a sort, or, by the third act, if those events are being used by Arty to cover up some deeply private shame and regret. After all, in the first act, Arty and Auggie, two twentysomethings who appear to be trapped in an apartment, imagine a surreal road trip to Las Vegas. But are they dreaming, or are they actually on their way? In the second act, Arty and Auggie, two fortysomething gangsters on the lam in Las Vegas, hide out in a hotel room where they interact with an animatronic boss who keeps promising to bring them a job. Fueled by paranoia thanks to the television, Auggie isn’t even certain when they became gangsters, or how. Instead, Auggie thinks there's some kind of setup going on. Arty's not so sure. In the third act, Arty is a very old man, likely in an assisted living facility in Nevada, who thinks he’s in a play. Arty, somehow in his twenties again, is in the audience of the play. Except how could he be in the audience when we learn that he probably died when he and Arty went in search of a legendary place that does not exist (like Atlantis) called Las Vegas? Dealing with memory, fantasy, conspiracist thinking, and friendship, Andrew Farkas' debut play shows that what happens in Vegas may not stay in Vegas. And what happens when all that surreality bleeds out?
*Special pre-sale price until June 9, 2026
Throughout the course of The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas, we are asked to question whether the events of each act happened in some form at some time to the protagonists, Arty and Auggie, or if those events were dreams of a sort, or, by the third act, if those events are being used by Arty to cover up some deeply private shame and regret. After all, in the first act, Arty and Auggie, two twentysomethings who appear to be trapped in an apartment, imagine a surreal road trip to Las Vegas. But are they dreaming, or are they actually on their way? In the second act, Arty and Auggie, two fortysomething gangsters on the lam in Las Vegas, hide out in a hotel room where they interact with an animatronic boss who keeps promising to bring them a job. Fueled by paranoia thanks to the television, Auggie isn’t even certain when they became gangsters, or how. Instead, Auggie thinks there's some kind of setup going on. Arty's not so sure. In the third act, Arty is a very old man, likely in an assisted living facility in Nevada, who thinks he’s in a play. Arty, somehow in his twenties again, is in the audience of the play. Except how could he be in the audience when we learn that he probably died when he and Arty went in search of a legendary place that does not exist (like Atlantis) called Las Vegas? Dealing with memory, fantasy, conspiracist thinking, and friendship, Andrew Farkas' debut play shows that what happens in Vegas may not stay in Vegas. And what happens when all that surreality bleeds out?
A rollicking, rapid-fire barrage of cracked banter, escalating absurdism, and cosmic philosophy, tunneling through the wastelands of Beckett and into the dark heart of America by way of ancient Egypt and dimensions not on any map.
—David Leo Rice, author of The Squimbop Condition
In The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas, Andrew Farkas drags the neon-lit desert into a delirious, hallucinatory theatrum mundi where the sacred collides with the profane. Lyrical and humorous, this visionary play bewilders, enchants, and lingers long after the final blackout.
—D. Harlan Wilson, author of Usurper
—David Leo Rice, author of The Squimbop Condition
In The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas, Andrew Farkas drags the neon-lit desert into a delirious, hallucinatory theatrum mundi where the sacred collides with the profane. Lyrical and humorous, this visionary play bewilders, enchants, and lingers long after the final blackout.
—D. Harlan Wilson, author of Usurper