Bryan Cranston won a Tony Award Sunday night for his portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson in “All the Way,” this year’s Best Play winner. The Broadway production was first staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has two scenes involving agriculture. (American Repertory Theater/Evgenia Elisee)

NEW YORK CITY — “All the Way,” the play about President Lyndon Johnson that won the Tony Award for best play and best actor on Sunday, contains two key scenes involving agriculture, and originated at one of the nation’s premier rural theatrical venues, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

“All the Way” covers the period from Nov. 23, 1963 — the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated — through the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Johnson’s 1964 landslide election.

In the play, as conservative senators threaten to block the Civil Rights Act, Johnson is seen threatening to withhold farm subsidies to Mississippi and agreeing to back the controversial Central Arizona Project, which diverted the Colorado River to irrigate nearly 1 million acres of Arizona agricultural areas as well as provide water to several communities in the state.

The play, written by Robert Schenkkan, was first staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., in 2012.

On Broadway, Johnson is played by Bryan Cranston, who won the Tony for best performance by an actor in a lead role for playing Johnson. (Cranston is best known for his performance as Walter White on AMC’s “Breaking Bad.”)

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1935, commissioned “All the Way” as part of its American Revolutions project, a cycle of plays springing from moments of change in the United States.

The festival will follow up this summer with the debut of “The Great Society,” also written by Schenkkan, which tells the story of LBJ’s struggles from 1965 to 1968 to fight a “war on poverty” even as the war in Vietnam spins out of control.

▪ Tony Awards
▪ “All the Way” on Broadway
▪ Oregon Shakespeare Festival