Set in a barren stretch of 1870's Nebraska, this contemporary tragic opera follows a family desperate to meet the impossible requirements of the Homestead Act. Designed using only the prop storage of a local university, the set centered on a burial mound constructed from approximately 200 pounds of rubber playground mulch, anchoring a tennis-court style stage that placed the audience face-to-face with the characters’ unraveling hopes. The Zegners’ home was built to reflect both their fraying family dynamics and the illusion of progress with a structure that appeared fully formed, yet could be easily dismantled. Due to the constraints of time and budget, I was unable to incorporate what was originally intended as the set’s crowning element: a narrow wheat field suspended upside down from the grid. This addition was designed to introduce movement and height to the otherwise confined stage, and nodded to the nebulous line between life and death in the show.