Editor’s Letter – 8/1/18

Performance is an action. It is, to borrow from cultural critic Elin Diamond, “always a doing and a thing done.” Making art from that thing done, and bearing witness to it, is one of the most primitive and powerful ways we try to know ourselves. At its most transformative, experiencing a great play—or a ballet, or a symphony, or a work of performance art—can make the potential for change in our lives legible. It can show us new ways of being.

But life isn’t a grad school seminar, and the performing arts are about more than individual experiences. We live in communities, after all, and the performing arts are part of an economic engine that creates jobs, generates commerce, and drives tourism in those communities.

With state and federal arts funding forever in jeopardy, we should remember that Oklahoma’s arts and culture nonprofits goosed our economy to the tune of more than $850 million in 2015. That same year, arts and culture spending in the state created or sustained nearly 30,000 jobs, according to a study by Oklahomans for the Arts.  

Of course, the value of the performing arts is more than monetary. It’s the annual production of “The Nutcracker” your family can’t miss during the holidays. It’s the dull pain in your cheeks after laughing yourself sick at the Blue Whale Comedy Festival. If we stopped investing in the arts, you’d notice—and you’d hate it.    

I hope you’ll keep these ideas of value and community in mind as you explore our fall performing arts guide. When you support the performing arts—gussied up in neat little rows with your friends, neighbors, and enemies, sharing the timeless experience of watching people make art with their bodies—you make your community better, and you become a better member of it.

See an improv show. Experience an opera. Watch a play. It’s really fun.

Speaking of fun: Be sure to read Brady Whisenhunt’s excellent story about 80s “hair metal” in Tulsa. Learn something about empathy and bail reform in Barry Friedman’s account of a meeting between unlikely political allies; skate down memory lane at the last roller rink in Tulsa with a beautiful photo essay by Destiny Jade Green and Joseph Rushmore; and please don’t miss Alicia Chesser’s rich profile of local playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle, who makes art and practices law with the voices of her Cherokee ancestors echoing in her heart.

Happy reading! Thank you. I love you.