by | Oct 20, 2024 11:00 am | Comments (0)
wade rathbone williams photo
Orville Peck at the Tulsa Theater
Orville Peck: The Stampede Tour
Tulsa Theater
Tulsa
Oct. 11, 2024
What do you call a gay cowboy? Until recently, your uncle might have said “a jolly rancher,” but the collective pop culture mind now turns immediately to THE gay cowboy: Orville Peck.
Continue reading ‘Tulsa Is Not-So-Secretly Fond Of Orville Peck’
by | Oct 18, 2024 3:58 pm | Comments (0)
ryan anderson photo
Aaron Sawyer, Big City, and Shyheim Nwadiei at Rapper's Delight.
Rapper’s Delight
Living Arts of Tulsa
Tulsa
October 12, 2024
Go big or go home. That’s the sentiment I always get watching an Aaron Sawyer performance. The emcee, battle rapper, and mental health advocate has performed on many Tulsa stages throughout his career, all while helping to build platforms and cultivate relationships within Tulsa hip-hop. This time the platform was his own: he called it Rapper’s Delight, which is also the name of one of the most famous songs in hip-hop, so you can imagine the high bar Sawyer set himself to clear.
by | Oct 18, 2024 11:56 am | Comments (0)
zb reeves photo
American stories, plural.
American Artists, American Stories
Philbrook Museum of Art
Tulsa
Through December 29, 2024
When people talk about being American, they’re inevitably talking about the flavor of American that they themselves are. Being an American is different for the recently-arrived Hmong mother of two than it is for the white suburban housewife whose British ancestors colonized Native land. So much is America the melting pot it claims to be that to say “American” tends to beg several qualifiers of description.
Continue reading ‘Philbrook’s New Show Gets Much Of America Right’
by | Oct 13, 2024 11:51 am | Comments (0)
university of tulsa photo
TU Presidential Lecture Series: Jad Abumrad
Lorton Performance Center
Tulsa
October 8, 2024
I wasn’t the only one who was excited to see Jad Abumrad. The Lorton Performance Center’s 635 seats were all full as the former host of WNYC’s RadioLab took the stage as part of TU’s Presidential Lecture Series. Abumrad delivered a tight, strong, fascinating lecture about the nature of conversation — and as a radio host, he should know.
by | Oct 11, 2024 3:58 pm | Comments (0)
twisted arts film festival photo
Twisted Arts Film Festival
Circle Cinema
Tulsa
Oct. 2 – 5, 2024
In 2021, Tulsa added two much-needed film festivals to its CV: the all-online Greenwood Film Festival, which debuted in the midst of the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the Twisted Arts Film Festival, dedicated to promoting stories by and about the LGBTQ2S+ community. Both are still going strong in 2024.
Continue reading ‘Reel Twisted: Forging Community Through Film’
by | Sep 27, 2024 1:03 pm | Comments (0)
ryan anderson photo
Written Quincey at LowDown
Written Quincey & GÜD PPL
LowDown
Tulsa
Sept. 21, 2024
The Sanctuary — a dimly lit Chicago nightclub where jazz, blues, and poetry collided — was a pivotal place in the movie Love Jones, where a young poet named Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate) attempts to woo Nina Mosley (Nia Long), an aspiring photographer. Tulsa has its own version of The Sanctuary at LowDown, where Written Quincey (still young) recently took the stage as a teacher, a poet, and a rapper, in front of a crowd that loves jass. (I’ll explain what that means in a minute.)
by | Sep 26, 2024 4:32 pm | Comments (0)
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Jakob Dylan
The Wallflowers
Tulsa Theater
Tulsa
Sept. 22, 2024
I don’t think “ordinary” is pejorative. Without at least some artists finding contentment as part of a greater tradition, what would happen to jazz or ballet or opera? The extraordinariness of these art forms stems from constant contact with their deep and familiar roots. What about rock ‘n’ roll as we know it?
by | Sep 23, 2024 11:46 am | Comments (0)
Hip Hop 918
Guthrie Green
Tulsa
Sept. 14, 2024
It’s been 23 years since Ludacris and the late Nate Dogg dropped their hit single “Area Codes.” 918 wasn’t mentioned. At that time Tulsa had an unnoticed musical footprint. Fast forward to today, when Tulsa has its own hip-hop festival called Hip Hop 918, which launched in 2018 to celebrate the elements of the genre and pay homage to some of the best to ever do it.
by | Sep 20, 2024 11:24 am | Comments (0)
tulsa symphony orchestra photos
Composer Valerie Coleman and pianist Sean Chen
Tulsa Symphony Orchestra: Coleman, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa
Sept. 14, 2024
I first heard the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra at the final concert of their 2023 – 2024 season, where they knocked the Mahler Fifth out of the park, surprising this Tulsa newcomer with their power, vivacity and nuance.
Continue reading ‘May We Interest You In Some Tasteful Trombone Sliding?’
by | Sep 20, 2024 11:16 am | Comments (0)
tulsa ballet photo
Jun Masuda in Alice Topp's "Square Pegs"
Tulsa Ballet: Creations In Studio K
Tulsa Ballet
Sept. 14, 2024
Blink and you’ll miss it: the moment when, at the end of one of the most irresistible duets I’ve ever seen on a Tulsa Ballet stage, a woman crawls up from underneath a baggy sweater her man is wearing, belly to belly with him until her face pokes out of the neck hole, facing his. In a perfect magic-trick switcheroo, she ends up wearing it herself, standing alone, as he ducks down out of it and walks away.
Continue reading ‘Everything Fits Together For Creations In Studio K’
by | Sep 13, 2024 3:13 pm | Comments (0)
cassidy petrazzi and alicia chesser photos
Looking into and out from home (performance artist Michelle Kenny at right)
TELEPORTAL: “Homeward”
TAC Gallery
Tulsa
Through Sept. 28
Probably the craziest sound bite to come out of the recent presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was Trump’s unsubstantiated rant about immigrants eating pets — a laughable but harmful conspiracy theory that speaks to dark, xenophobic lies about those desperate to enter our country who are seeking a new home and a better life.
Continue reading ‘18 Artists, Seven Countries: One Quilt Hanging In Tulsa’
by | Sep 13, 2024 3:00 pm | Comments (0)
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The full range of flavors in Theatre Tulsa's "Waitress"
Theatre Tulsa: “Waitress”
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tulsa
Sept. 8, 2024
Fair warning: I’m going to exercise about as much restraint in my use of cooking-related metaphors in this review as this show does — which is to say, not much. I’m not complaining; the obvious but effective multi-layered metaphor is the bread and butter of the musical as a genre, and I’d eat it every day.
by | Sep 8, 2024 10:03 am | Comments (0)
Lindsey Smith photo
Elisa Harkins performing "Deadly"
Indigenous Language Poetry Night
Woody Guthrie Center
Tulsa
Aug. 31, 2024
The story in Tulsa this Labor Day weekend was all about the Big Dam Party, and amid the celebration (and lingering questions) about the state of Water in the River, it stands to reason that other happenings in town may have been overlooked. Indigenous Language Poetry Night with Words of the People had additional wrinkles with last-minute lineup changes and technological hiccups. Nevertheless, a few enthusiastic poets and poetry fans ventured out into a rainstorm Saturday night to visit a different gathering place, the Woody Guthrie Center, for an evening that was a call to language reclamation in varying forms and presentations.
by | Sep 8, 2024 10:02 am | Comments (0)
mitch gilliam photo
The West 23rd Street Lot-A-Burger rises again
Lot-A-Burger
928 W. 23rd St.
Tulsa
Sept. 5, 2024
I just know a burger hate to see me comin’.
Though not on the level of a George Motz, I consider myself a bit of a burger historian. I’ve been to the longhorn pastures of Meers’ Burger and the onion-fried mecca of Sid’s Diner in El Reno, and am very annoying on Facebook when In-N-Out is mentioned. In 2017 I ate at all six Lot-A-Burgers in Tulsa for an article in The Tulsa Voice, and subsequently won a journalism award for my efforts.
by | Sep 6, 2024 11:20 am | Comments (0)
C ANDREW NICHOLS PHOTO
Jody Graham, Ibrahim Buyckes, and Steve Barker in Daniel Hitzman's "Knock Knock"
Heller Shorts: Kick Off Your Shorts!
Notion Coffee
Tulsa
Sept. 1, 2024
I went a bunch of places last Sunday afternoon: a backyard garden, a courtroom, a roadside diner with Deadwood vibes (haunted), a shark-infested ocean strewn with human limbs, a psychiatrist’s office, a living room (also haunted), a bathroom, and a fishing hole. Busy day? Or just two hours at Heller Shorts?
Continue reading ‘“Shorts” In The Round Thinks Outside The Box’
