American Son is the first collaborative partnership between Message Theater, of Lexington, and Bluegrass Theatre Guild, Frankfort. The show is being produced by the venerable Patrick Mitchell, co-founder of Message Theater, and directed by Shawn Reaves (recent director of The Crucible, A Streetcar Named Desire, Miracle on 34th Street).
An estranged bi-racial couple must confront their feelings about race and bias after their son is detained by local police following a traffic stop incident. Their disparate histories and backgrounds inform their assumptions as they try to find out what happened to their son. At 4:00 AM in a Miami police station, all they know is, “There was an incident. We don’t know what. The car was stopped and there is a pending investigation.”