Camels, rattlesnakes and a cabal of hard-drinking, quirky mavericks come together in a new play.

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts presents “West is West, or The Great American Camel Race” as part of its Whidbey Island Fringe Festival Thursday, Aug. 4 through Sunday, Aug. 7.

The play is set in Virginia City, Nev. in the mid-1970s and dramatizes the lives of seven misfits gathered by accident in the small ghost town above Reno and the Washoe Valley.

They drink, they argue, they flirt and a few of them bet on the outcome of the newly returned camel race through town. The race revisits an annual event that was big in the 19th century, when Mark Twain lived there and wrote for the Territorial Enterprise.

“The race is real, but our version is fictionalized, and having inside info on the outcome is central to at least one of the moral issues of the play,” playwright Tom Churchill said.

He calls the play a moral comedy that covers everything from insider information and homophobia to its central theme of brotherhood.

This central issue extends to understanding the way one’s locale informs identity.  Main characters, Jimmy and Orville, are half brothers who meet again in this small outpost in Nevada.  The “West” means something different to each of them. The coast is imprinted on Jimmy’s heart, while Orville adopts Nevada as his own best way of showing what’s he’s become, having escaped the “rainy gloom” of the brothers’ upbringing.

Their attempts to convince the other of their personal vision of what is authentically “The West” is complicated by their involvement in the camel race, a tourist attraction which attempts to revive Virginia City’s glory days.  A bitter debate develops between the brothers over insider information on the race. However, they discover that morality becomes meaningless against the forces of nature, and ultimately the forces that bind them together.

Dwight Zehm directs the play and sees nature as a significant force in the play’s themes.

“Nature is both human nature and the immediate natural world that is our chosen Eden,” Zehm said.

“We look for peace and solace, challenge and adventure, love and nurturing.  We sometimes act in the face of certain failure; we are survivors. I see this play as a statement about how our lives — our struggles and successes — are always at the mercy of nature’s power,” he said.

Churchill said the idea of the terrifying power of raw nature and its ability to change perspective is a theme that resonates from personal experience.

“I did experience a major quake when I was 12,” Churchill said.

“Babysitting my younger brother, I considered for two seconds the protection of a door frame, then fled with him into the back yard, where

I watched our metal clothesline posts twanging lines like a mad harpist, and remained shaken for days afterward.”

This story, steeped as it is in the dusty, luminous, historic mystique of the American desert, parallels the human desire for solace in the natural world with the longing to find common ground with each other.

“This is a story from the American West where the majesty of nature still thrives through all the boom and bust cycles we throw at it,” Zehm said.

“We build our dreams, shore them up when they age and sag; but nature still reminds us that it has the upper hand and can declare us “misfits” any time it chooses.  All the while, nature is where we go for comfort. Something deeply held inside each of us is explored through Tom’s characters and their desires,” the director added.

In the end, what none of these marginal characters can avoid is the power of nature — earthquakes, tsunamis and the sudden appearance of a rattlesnake. Ultimately, it’s raw nature in all its ominous power that allows the brothers their moment of grace.

“West is West, or The Great American Camel Race” features Loren Churchill, Tom Churchill, Lane Koughan, Michael Morgen, Marta Mulholland, Nicole Parnell, Andrew Pearce and Zehm.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Aug. 4 to 6 and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors, military and $12 for youths.

Call 221-8268 or 800-638-7631 for tickets, or visit www.WICAonline.com.