Front row, center

Tulsa’s 2018 winter & spring performing arts guide

They say all the world’s a stage. But some places have actual stages and host inspiring, touching, poignant works of art. Here’s what’s happening at those kinds of places around Tulsa from now to July.

January

Every Saturday
The Drunkard and The Olio
Still the longest-running play in the country, Tulsans have attended this melodrama and revue for over 60 years.
Tulsa Spotlight Theatre
Tulsa Spotlighters

12–21 Evita
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Theatre Tulsa

What a fine time for a good look at the mythologies of power. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1978 musical “Evita” follows the life and death of actress Eva Perón, the first lady of Argentina from 1946–1952, a near-saint to her constituents and an icon in a world obsessed with rags-to-riches narratives. She died at 33, with her profound political influence among the poor of her country inseparable from her carefully-tended celebrity status. Patti LuPone immortalized her on Broadway, Madonna on film. With Karlena Riggs and John Orsulak as the Peróns and Sean Patrick Rooney as the narrator, Che, Theatre Tulsa tries Evita’s story on for size under the direction of The University of Tulsa’s Machele Miller Dill as part of a season of classic musicals. The first British musical ever to win a Tony Award, it’s an epic show in true Webber style, featuring the anthemic “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” “You Must Love Me,” and some useful meditations on the complex relationship between fame and public service.

13 An Evening with Eric Whitacre
Tulsa Symphony welcomes Grammy-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, known for his “Virtual Choir” projects, which bring people from around the world together in an online choir.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Symphony

14 Cabaret
Escape to the seedy underbelly of Berlin as the world creeps ever closer to WWII.
Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center

14 Second Sunday Serials
See five new short plays by local writers and vote on which three should continue into the next month’s installment.
Agora Event Center
Heller Theatre Company

18 Concerts with Commentary: Eclectic, Reflective and Renovated
TU’s music and discussion series continues with violinists Maureen O’Boyle and Pete Peterson and cellist Lorelei Barton.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

19–20 OKMEA Conference Concerts
The Oklahoma Music Educators Association presents concerts featuring their Honor Band, All-State chorus, and All-State instrumental ensemble.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Oklahoma Music Educators Association

20 Serafin String Quartet
The Quartet in Residence at The University of Delaware, Serafin String Quartet takes its name from master luthier Sanctus Serafin, who in 1728 crafted the violin SSQ violinist Kate Ransom plays.
Gussman Concert Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

22 TU Chamber Music Tulsa Heckman Award Competition
Student chamber music ensembles compete for a $6,000 award.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

23 Richard Alston
J. Donald Feagin Visiting Artist Richard Alston presents a unique program entitled “The Art of the Piano Transcription.”
Gussman Concert Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

23–28 A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder
This winner of the 2014 Tony for Best Musical is the story of a distant heir to a family fortune who sets out to jump the line of succession by eliminating the eight relatives (all played by one actor) who stand in his way.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Celebrity Attractions

26 Bartók, Beethoven, Harbison
A TSO chamber ensemble performs Bartók’s “Contrasts,” Beethoven’s duet sonatas, and Harbison’s “Songs America Loves to Sing.”
Fly Loft
Tulsa Symphony

26–27 Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
This contemporary ballet company is known for its distinctive repertoire of groundbreaking works and virtuoso dancers.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Choregus Productions

27 A Night at the Opera
Hear pieces by Bizet, Monteverdi, Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, and Tobias Picker, Artistic Director of Tulsa Opera.
VanTrease PACE
Signature Symphony

28 Ensemble 4.1
This German ensemble makes use of its unusual quintet combination—piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn—playing rarely-performed masterworks by Mozart, Beethoven, and other composers.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Chamber Music Tulsa

30 Gobsmacked
A sell-out hit in the UK, Gobsmacked is a showcase of a diverse range of a cappella singing, from traditional street-corner harmonies to multi-track live looping and beatboxing.
Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center

February

2 Laura Linney
The Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning actress speaks about her cancer advocacy work.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Town Hall

2 Freedom Train
This family-friendly production tells the story of Harriet Tubman through a series of scenes incorporating dance, dialogue, and music of the period.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

2–11 The Crucible
Arthur Miller’s dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials mirrors the Red Scare of the 1950s, when the play was written.
Clark Youth Theatre

3–11 Seven Guitars
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson, “Seven Guitars” shows the events leading up to the death of a guitarist just on the verge of fame in 1948 Pittsburgh.
Liddy Doenges Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Theatre North

4 Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3
Conducted by Daniel Hege, this concert will also feature “Medea’s Dance of Vengeance” by Samuel Barber and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto, featuring soloist Rossitza Jekova-Goza.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Symphony

7 Brown Bag It: Barron Ryan
The pianist performs pieces from his catalog of “classic meets cool” pieces.
Kathleen Westby Pavilion, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

8 Concerts with Commentary: Favorites and Finds
Soprano Judith Pannill Raiford and pianist Brady McElligott perform works by Schumann, Debussy, Frederick Delius, and Émile Jacques-Dalcroze.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

9–11 Strictly Gershwin
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Ballet with Tulsa Symphony

The 2017–2018 season sees Tulsa Ballet maintaining its balance between beloved classics and envelope-pushing work that’s new or new to Tulsa. “Strictly Gershwin” hits at the sweet spot right in the middle. This is the Oklahoma premiere of the extravaganza by Derek Deane, former artistic director of the English National Ballet. The production bubbles over like a glass of champagne, with 40 ballet dancers, 14 tap dancers (some found through a local audition), four singers, and 45 musicians all onstage together, and costumes straight out of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers number and a parade of George and Ira Gershwin’s greatest musical hits. Jazzy swing and glamorous ballroom styles should come easily for the unusually vivacious company of dancers TB has assembled this season (plus, it’s always delicious to see classically-trained artists get a chance to let their hair down and have some non-balletic fun). These folks do sweep-you-away glamour like few other groups in town. Put on a snazzy suit and take your Valentine.

9–17 The Boys Next Door
This play is a humorous and often poignant series of vignettes focused on a group home where four mentally challenged men live with an earnest but increasingly burned-out young social worker.
Muskogee Little Theatre

9–18 Assassins
In Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s revue-style portrayal of nine people who assassinated or tried to assassinate presidents of the United States, the music for each would-be or to-be killer reflects the popular music of his or her era. See pg. 24 for more information.
IDL Ballroom
Theatre Pops

9–18 The Comedy of Errors
Two sets of identical twins separated at birth find themselves in a series of mishaps due to mistaken identities in one of the earliest (and most farcical) plays by William Shakespeare.
Broken Arrow Community Playhouse

11 Second Sunday Serials
See five new short plays by local writers and vote on which three should continue into the next month’s installment.
Agora Event Center
Heller Theatre Company

13 Béla Rózsa Music Composition Competition and Concert
Performances of pieces by student composers in college and high school.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

15 Violinist James Ehnes
One of the foremost violinists of his generation, Ehnes made his orchestral debut with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at age 13 and is now a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada.
John H. Williams Theatre
ORU Music Department

16–17 Sinatra’s America
Trumpeter Jeff Shadley and Signature Symphony play the classic hits that made Old Blue Eyes one of the best-selling singers of all time.
VanTrease PACE
Signature Symphony

16–25 Harvey
Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy is the story of an affable gentleman and his good friend Harvey, a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall invisible pooka rabbit.
Sapulpa Community Theatre

16–25 Four Chords and a Gun
This black comedy—written by “The Big Bang Theory” actor John Ross Bowie—is the story of The Ramones working with Phil Spector from 1978–80 for their fifth album, The End of the Century.
Liddy Doenges Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Project Theatre

16–25 Tom Sawyer, Detective
Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this adaption of Mark Twain’s 1896 Tom Sawyer sequel.
Spotlight Theatre
Spotlight Children’s Theatre

17 The Stars Align: Tulsa Opera’s 70th Anniversary
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Opera

Tulsa’s first documented opera performance happened in 1904, and the oil-rich city has had a taste for the artform ever since. (L. J. Martin, a City of Tulsa founding father, said a year later, “Of course, we did not have any sewers or street paving, but these were luxuries that could wait, whereas an opera house loomed as an immediate necessity.”) Tulsa Opera evolved in the early 1950s and celebrates its 70th anniversary this year with a gala at its longtime home, the PAC. Like many arts institutions, opera in the 21st century increasingly balances its history of luxury with social relevance and community appeal. Under its two creative innovators, Greg Weber and Tobias Picker, TO makes a big impact locally with two major productions a year, as well as one by its educational outreach arm, the Tulsa Youth Opera. The anniversary gala in support of this work includes dinner by chef Justin Thompson; performances by opera stars Sarah Coburn, Susan Graham, David Portillo, and Aaron Blake, led by Native American conductor Timothy Long; and dancing at the first-ever after-party on the stage of the Williams Theatre.

17 Betweenity
This vignette play dives into and explores the awkward silences in conversations.
Tulsa Little Theatre
Encore!

21 Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Live: King for a Day
The PBS cartoon cat hops off the TV and takes the trolley into your neighborhood.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Mills Entertainment

22 Béla Rózsa Memorial Concert
Featuring compositions by winners of the Béla Rózsa Composition Competition, as well as music composed in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Gussman Concert Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

22–25 1984
TU Theatre presents a multimedia production of George Orwell’s dystopian story in which a totalitarian government controls what its citizens think, believe, and remember.
Kendall Hall
TU Theatre

23 Pasadena Roof Orchestra
This big band keeps the swing music of the ‘20s and ‘30s alive with incredible musicianship and a light-hearted style.
Venue TBA
Choregus Productions

March

1 The Road to Ellington
A vocal jazz tribute to Duke Ellington, featuring such classics as “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Satin Doll,” and “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Sheridan Road

1–4 She Loves Me
Based on the same Hungarian play that was the basis for the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” this musical revolves around two shop employees who, despite being at odds with each other, are unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal.
Howard Auditorium
ORU Theatre

2–4 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie Bucket, Veruca Salt, Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregard, and Mike Teavee are the first and only children allowed into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and they discover it surpasses even their wildest dreams.
Tulsa Little Theatre
Encore!

4 Carnegie Hall Link Up: The Orchestra Sings Family Concert
For more than 30 years, Carnegie Hall Link Up has paired orchestras with students in grades 3–5 to explore fundamental music skills. Students will participate by singing or playing recorders along with Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Symphony

6–11 Finding Neverland
Based on the Oscar-winning film of the same name, this musical tells the story of “Peter Pan” playwright J.M. Barrie and the family who inspired his greatest creation.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Celebrity Attractions

7 Brown Bag It: The bART Center for Music
bART Center students perform.
Kathleen Westby Pavilion, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

8 Concerts with Commentary: A Musical Legacy
This concert features Celtic/folk/bluegrass group Vintage Wildflowers with special guests Scott Schmidt and Quinn Maher.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

9 Beethoven and Ewazen
A TSO chamber ensemble performs Eric Ewazen’s Trio for Trumpet, Violin and Piano (1992), as well as pieces by Beethoven.
Fly Loft
Tulsa Symphony

9–17 A Steady Rain
Liddy Doenges Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
American Theatre Company

Never a troupe to shy away from the dark side, American Theatre Company started its 48th season with a sensational production of the Tony Award-winning tragicomedy “Fun Home” and continues with “A Steady Rain,” a hard-boiled duologue—like a monologue, but for a pair of actors—about two Chicago police officer friends (originally played on Broadway by Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig) whose professional lives and personal loyalties come into harrowing conflict when a domestic disturbance call goes horribly wrong. The playwright, Keith Huff, was a writer for “House of Cards” and “Mad Men,” so he knows his way around gritty dialogue and stories of corruption and lost dreams. The play is minimalist in design, with the two actors addressing each other and the audience in a downpour of words as unrelenting as the rain in the title. Expect a tour de force from the two actors, as well as challenging material with themes of addiction and violence.

9–18 Into the Woods
Classic fairy tales collide to show storybook tales don’t always get storybook endings in Stephen Sondheim’s beloved musical.
John H. Williams Theater, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Theatre Tulsa

10 Mozart and Ives
Tulsa Oratorio Chorus, Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, and organist Casey Cantwell perform Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, Charles Ives’s “The Celestial Country,” and the Buck Concert Variations on “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Trinity Episcopal Church
Tulsa Oratorio Chorus

11 Horszowski Trio with Masumi Per Rostad
The trio will perform Schumann’s Trio in F Major, Op. 80 and Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Night Migrations” (written specifically for Horszowski Trio), and Rostad will join the Trio for Dvorak’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Chamber Music Tulsa

11 Second Sunday Serials
See five new short plays by local writers and vote on which three should continue into the next month’s installment.
Agora Event Center
Heller Theater Company

16–18 Cinderella
The classic tale of an ordinary girl and one magical night inspired Prokofiev’s 1945 ballet. Choreographed by Ben Stevenson.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Ballet

17 Made in America
Signature Symphony performs Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and TU professor Joseph Rivers’s Concerto for Oboe and English Horn.
VanTrease PACE
Signature Symphony

23 Rudy Maxa
Travel expert and Emmy-winning television host Rudy Maxa shares stories from great destinations around the world.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Town Hall

24 Mahler’s Symphony No. 4
TSO performs John Adams’s “Chairman Dances,” Edward Elgar’s “In the South (Alassio),” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, featuring soprano soloist Sara Coburn.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Symphony

30–April 8 The Sleeping Beauty
When an evil enchantment causes a princess to sleep for 100 years, only a kiss from the son of a king can wake her.
Spotlight Theatre
Spotlight Children’s Theatre

April

3–5 The Sound of Music
This classic musical is sure to make the list of many theatergoers’ favorite things.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Celebrity Attractions

4 Brown Bag It: TSO Woodwinds Quintet
Kathleen Westby Pavilion, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

6 Curious George: The Golden Meatball
Everyone’s favorite monkey and his friends Chef Pisghetti churn out meatballs for All-You-Can-Eat Meatball Day.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

6–7 Tulsa Sings! 100 Years of Song
Finalists in The News On 6’s Tulsa Sings competition will perform with Signature Symphony and beside Scott Coulter and other Broadway stars.
VanTrease PACE
Signature Symphony

6–14 Triple Feature
Nightingale Theatre
Heller Theatre Company

Now in its third season as an independent entity after its city funding was cut, Heller Theatre Company walks the talk in the Tulsa theater community, coming up with new ways to support, produce, and engage artists and viewers alike in the craft of writing and performing plays. This season, Heller took a gamble in a city that needs more gambles in the arts department and decided to produce only original works. So far, so fun: They’ve partnered with the Tulsa Latino Theater Company for “Time for Chocolate” and started a series called Second Sunday Serials (parts of which are streamed live on Facebook), where audience members vote on which works-in-progress get to be developed as they move to the next round. “Triple Feature,” an evening of one-act plays at Tulsa’s original indie theater, the Nightingale, closes the season, featuring new work by David Blakely (whose “The Light Fantastic, Or In the Wood” won a TATE award last year), Michael Wright (University of Tulsa applied of creative writing, theatre, and film), and Archer C. Williams (who won best in show in the 2017 Heller Shorts contest).

13–15 TBII: Emerging Choreographer’s Showcase
Tulsa Ballet’s second company performs three world-premier works by up-and-coming choreographers, including Penny Saunders.
Studio K and Anne & Henry Zarrow Performance Studio, Hardesty Center for Dance Education
Tulsa Ballet

13–21 The Producers
The winner of the most Tony Awards for a single production, Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” is the tale of two men who discover they can make more money on Broadway with a flop than with a hit.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa PAC
Theatre Tulsa

13–21 Annie
Leapin’ lizards! The lovable orphan Annie reminds us that even when life gets dark, the sun is always just over the horizon.
Muskogee Little Theatre

13 Piper Kerman
The author of the memoir-turned-Netflix series “Orange is the New Black,” Piper Kerman, and Women’s Prison Association board member talks about the real-life story behind the TV show.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Town Hall

14 Voyage of Discovery: Space, The Final Frontier
With guest conductor Ron Spigelman, TSO will perform Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” as well as some memorable themes from the star worlds of “Trek” and “Wars,” accompanied by projected images from NASA.
Tulsa PAC
Tulsa Symphony

15 TU Spring Chamber Music Concert
Student chamber music ensembles perform.
Meinig Recital Hall, Lorton Performance Center
TU School of Music

19 Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella
The classic Tony-winning Broadway take on this fairy-godmothers-and-glass-slippers fairy tale comes to Broken Arrow.
Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center

20–27 Happy Days
Richie Cunningham, Potsie, Ralph Malph, and the Fonz are back to help save Arnold’s Drive In from demolition by hosting a dance contest and wrestling match.
Broken Arrow Community Playhouse

21 Mahler & Faingold
Noam Faingold, director of the bART Conservatory, presents the world premiere of his piece “Others,” followed by a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony by Signature Symphony.
VanTrease PACE
Signature Symphony

22 Takács Quartet
The Grammy-winning quartet performs Mozart’s Quartet in G Major, K.387, Dohnányi’s Quartet No. 2, and Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Chamber Music Tulsa

27–29 Tick … Tick … Boom!
This autobiographical musical by the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning creator of “Rent,” Jonathan Larson, tells a story about holding onto your dreams through life’s most difficult challenges.
Liddy Doenges Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Project Theatre

27 & 29 Turandot
Giacomo Puccini’s final and most musically adventuresome opera is the fable of a princess who requires any suitor to answer three questions correctly—or face his death.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Opera

27–May 6 The Sunshine Boys
An aging vaudevillian comedy duo reunites for a TV special many years after an acrimonious split.
Sapulpa Community Theatre

May

1–2 Shen Yun
The Chinese dance company, inspired by hundreds of years of tradition, returns to Tulsa.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Falun Dafa Association Oklahoma

2 Brown Bag It: TSO Brass Quintet
Kathleen Westby Pavilion, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

3–6 Signature Series
Lorton Performance Center
Tulsa Ballet

Consistently its most interesting show of the year, Tulsa Ballet’s Signature Series brings together three short works chosen to mix in a little bite with the regularly-scheduled beauty. This year, artistic director Marcello Angelini has picked pieces that will hit those less obvious pleasure receptors—ones that make you think as well as feel. “The Green Table” is a crucially important dance work from 1932 made by German choreographer Kurt Jooss in a bleak historical moment between two wars. It’s an archetypal warning about history repeating itself, made in a groundbreaking style that combines cool irony with forthright emotion. (One of Jooss’s students was the legendary Pina Bausch.) “Rassemblement” by Nacho Duato explores themes of disenfranchisement and liberation in a dynamic, passionate dance set to Haitian folk songs. A new work by TB resident choreographer Ma Cong (fresh off his Broadway debut in “M. Butterfly”) completes the evening. A ballet company that sees itself as part of—not set apart from—sociopolitical engagement? More of that, please.

4–12 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
American Theatre Company

Act One: Fun and Games. Act Two: Walpurgisnacht. Act Three: The Exorcism. It won’t be the easiest night you’ll ever spend at the theater, but it might be one of the most important. When Edward Albee’s incendiary play opened in 1962, it exploded every norm of decorum in American theater with its devastating dive into the marriage of George and Martha, a middle-aged couple (played in the 1966 film version by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) who, over the course of three hours, with the unwitting participation of a younger couple, Nick and Honey, shred every precious, shared illusion that has kept them functioning together. The wit is savage and exhilarating, the truth-telling brutal, and the finale as cathartic as a Greek tragedy. The booze flows freely over what New York Times critic Charles Isherwood once called “the blood sport” of the evening’s living room entertainment. Productions of this play don’t come around often, so don’t miss this. It’ll change everything you think you know about what theater can do.

4–13 Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play
Each of the three acts of this play takes place further into the future after an apocalyptic disaster. Fading memories of 20th-century pop culture become myths and legends as well as the basis for new religions and culture.
Charles E. Norman Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Theatre Tulsa

12 Home Grown: Tulsa Symphony Soloists and Other Uniquely Oklahoma Artists
These performances include a piccolo and tuba duet and other collaborations featuring Tulsa Symphony Orchestra soloists and other musicians from the state, including Annie Ellicott, Barron Ryan, and guest conductor Ron Spigelman.
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Symphony

13 Second Sunday Serials
See five new short plays by local writers and vote on which three should continue into the next month’s installment.
Agora Event Center
Heller Theater Company

18–20 The Lion King Jr.
Students in Theatre Tulsa’s Broadway Bootcamp class perform Elton John and Tim Rice’s Broadway sensation.
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Theatre Tulsa

18–27 Jolly Roger and the Pirate Queen
When a gentleman overhears his wife saying he’s boring and that she’d rather marry a dashing and daring pirate, he takes the plunge by buying a ship, recruiting a crew, and even hiring Long John Silver as a pirate tutor.
Spotlight Theatre
Spotlight Children’s Theatre

24 Alicia Hall Moran: Black Wall Street
John H. Williams Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Choregus Productions

There can never be enough tellings and retellings of what happened to Black Wall Street in the 20th century, not just in Tulsa, but also nationwide. Silence perpetuates abuse. When history books make the evisceration of black affluence invisible, that means it can remain unseen when it happens today. There’s been a push in recent years to make this story heard, from Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey’s “Race Riot Suite” to Jennifer Latham’s hit young adult novel “Dreamland Burning.” Singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran, herself the daughter of a black financier, created this staged concert in collaboration with her husband, jazz pianist Jason Moran (artistic director of jazz at the Kennedy Center) and historian Gene Alexander Peters (co-director of the Slave Relic Museum in South Carolina). It’s a performance piece featuring Moran, a noted mezzo-soprano, and six musicians in a wide-ranging, many-layered exploration of the past, present, and future of money and blackness, drawing on sources including Black Enterprise Magazine from the 1980s, studies of 18th-century New York, and documents from the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921.

June

6 Brown Bag It: Luis Eduardo Garcia Garcia
Kathleen Westby Pavilion, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
PAC Trust

8–17 Over the River and Through the Woods
When a young man who spends every Sunday with his grandparents tells them he plans to move across the country,
they begin scheming to keep their grandson nearby.
Broken Arrow Community Playhouse

19–24 An American in Paris
Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Celebrity Attractions

“An American in Paris” has a long lineage, reaching back to 1928 with a work for orchestra by George Gershwin, which was adapted into a much-loved film by Vincente Minnelli in 1951, starring Gene Kelly as an American soldier and Leslie Caron as his spunky lover in a postwar France. It holds both bleakness and the hope of new beginnings. For this lavish Broadway production, director and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon of London’s Royal Ballet created a dance-rich homage to the original film. This adaptation by Craig Lucas (who wrote “The Light in the Piazza”) brings new depth to a story we’ve come to know as merely bright and jolly, making it surprisingly relevant in our own war-torn world. Expect some of the best dancing you’ve ever seen in a Broadway show, from a touring cast that includes a principal dancer from the National Ballet of Canada and a soloist from the Joffrey Ballet.

July

13–22 Lizzie
Liddy Doenges Theatre, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa Project Theatre

​Taking “edgy” to the extreme, Tulsa Project Theatre brings the axe—the tool kind, and the guitar kind—to the Doenges Theatre with “Lizzie,” a rock musical about the notorious Lizzie Borden, who was tried for and acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother by chopping them up at their own home in New England in 1892. Borden’s shocking story, a rubbernecker’s dream, was a media sensation throughout America and has resonated through many depictions, from ballets to novels. This version started as an experimental rock/theater hybrid in New York City’s Lower East Side and grew through the 1990s and 2000s into what its creators call “a big, loud rock show with a story.” It toured around the country, turned into a studio album, and now makes its Oklahoma debut with TPT, featuring four women fronting a six-piece rock band in a headbanging homage to a dark American myth. There will be blood.