For the Tuna, Texas, characters in “Tuna Does Vegas,” the new show from actors and co-authors Joe Sears and Jaston Williams offers a chance to get out of town.

They’ll all literally be in Texarkana at the Perot Theatre from Oct. 3-5 for five performances of the show that sees conservative radio host Arles Struvie and his wife Bertha Bumiller head to Las Vegas to renew their vows. The hilarity ensues when the whole fictional town, billed as the third smallest in Texas, follows them.

Sears and Williams have been performing all the Tuna characters since 1981 with “Greater Tuna,” “A Tuna Christmas,” “Red, White and Tuna,” and now a new installment in the madcap, satirical series of shows.

“We’ve been to Texarkana with some of our shows at the Perot,” said Williams recently during a phone interview. For this show, he said, it’s the same characters fans have come to know and love along with some additions.

“It’s kind of the antithesis of life in Tuna,” Williams said about placing them in Las Vegas. The aim was to put them somewhere to show off the satire and get the characters “in trouble.”

In Vegas there are no secrets, unlike the classic small town of Tuna where the church has a role in everything, Williams explained. And it’s in Vegas where the characters are confronted by things they’ve never seen before.

To research the role, Williams headed to Vegas itself for several trips, staying three or four days at a time and documenting what he saw.

“I saw a lot of ‘Tuna’ people in Vegas,” he said.

“Tuna Does Vegas” opened about a year ago and has undergone some rewrites and fine tuning since then.

Ed Howard co-wrote the play with the Tuna duo and directs the show. He’s also co-author for the first three Tuna installments.

“It’s also a challenge because we had to introduce some characters who are strictly Las Vegas characters,” Williams said.

Along the way, the Tuna folks meet showgirls, gangsters, beauticians and Elvis impersonators.

“There’s something in here to offend everybody, which in my measure is a really good show,” said Williams.

Then there’s a character named Anna Conda who wears snakeskin turbans.

“She’s a whole lot of fun,” said Williams, who plays her and 11 other characters. Sears also plays a dozen.

Because of the way Sears and Williams play off the audience and circumstances of each show, each one can be slightly different.

“We don’t change intentionally but sometimes something can happen that you just kind of have to acknowledge,” said Williams. There was the time bats made themselves known during a performance at one Texas theater.

“I’ve been known to take off a wig and chase them,” he said.

For the two of them, performing with each other comes naturally and easily.

“We have an acute sense of where the other is,” said Williams.

He believes their success is attributable to having known each other since 1973 and forming a solid friendship before they started the “Tuna” series.

And Williams said they’re looking forward to being back in Texarkana where people have had the foresight to not allow an old theater space to become a parking lot as has happened elsewhere.

“The Perot is a cool, cool space,” he said.

A three-day run here affords time for both matinees and evening performances.

The Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council invites the Saturday night ticket holders to attend the annual Women for the Arts Street Party. That’s free and takes place in front of the Perot at 6:30 p.m. As well, TRAHC will announce the winners of the TRAHC Hero Awards and its FaEllen and Jim Yates Collection Purchase Award before the show that night.



(Show times: Friday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 4, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $42, $37, $31, $25, $6 for evening; $40, $35, $29, $23, $6 for matinees. More information and ticket purchase: www.trahc.org or 903-792-4992.)