World Tours
“Theater is like a gym for empathy. It’s where we can go to build up the muscles of compassion, to practice listening and understanding and engaging with people that are not just like ourselves. We practice sitting down, paying attention and learning from other people’s actions. We practice caring.”
~ Bill English, San Francisco Playhouse
Theater, at its core, builds bridges between hearts and minds, allowing us to deeply connect with diverse human experiences. Our international performances and Global Guests programs amplifies this power, transforming travel into a journey of profound learning and connection. We forge lasting bonds, turning strangers into colleagues and friends, and distant places into personal touchstones. These interactions illuminate the rich tapestry of life beyond our immediate surroundings, revealing both our shared humanity and our unique differences. Through post-performance discussions, we challenge our perspectives, uncover hidden biases, and foster genuine cultural understanding. This transformative experience not only sharpens our actors’ skills but also cultivates a globally aware and culturally competent theater community in Tulsa, ultimately enriching our art.
Our first International Tour took place in Amsterdam, Delft, and the Hague in The Netherlands October 5-15, 2018
Pichanga
By Manuel Ortiz & Cristian Lopez
Directed by Manuel Ortiz
Performed by Cristian Lopez
Pichanga is the named we called the soccer games that kids play on the poor neighborhoods in Chile.
This is the true story of Cristian (the performer in this play), who was born in 1990 just after the Pinochet dictatorship was over, when kids could start to have dreams again. His dream, as every kid’s dream in Latin America, is to become a soccer star.
The play weaves Cristian’s own personal story, Chilean recent political history, and latinamerica soccer history, using Cristian’s dream of becoming a professional soccer player as the needle that tight the stories together. The play tells Cristian’s journey on how he quit his dream of being a soccer star and stopped playing soccer on the streets and started to fight on the street along with the student movement that fought for public education in Chile. At the end he changed from the streets to the stage, his new battlefield, to fight for his new dreams and his daughter´s.
A Man of No Importance
by Scrambled Egg Theatre Company
This very special production presented by our International Guests, Scrambled Egg Theatre Company all the way from London, England, does not have a single spoken word – there is no written text. Norman – a man of no importance – works as a cleaner at MI6, the headquarters of British Intelligence. He dreams of becoming a secret agent like James Bond. At work he is ignored and mistreated by colleagues until a strange series of events cause him to discover a secret and dangerous plot. The production is set to a musical score inspired by spy and secret agent movies of the 1960s and 70s.
I and You
by Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Justin Daniels (RIP)
Production Coordinator Kelli McLoud-Schingen
One afternoon, Anthony arrives unexpectedly at classmate Caroline’s door bearing a beat-up copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, an urgent assignment from their English teacher. Homebound due to illness, Caroline hasn’t been to school in months, but she is as quick and sardonic as Anthony is athletic, sensitive, and popular. As these two let down their guards and share their secrets, this seemingly mundane poetry project unlocks a much deeper mystery that has brought them together. I and You is an ode to youth, life, love, and the strange beauty of human connectedness.
Londyn Anderson as Caroline
Parker Gelsthorpe as Anthony
*Presented at the Sapperlot Youth Festival in Brixen Italy, June 2024
Best of Enemies
By Mark St. Germain
Directed by Kelli McLoud-Schingen
Stage Managed by Carmen White Janak
Dionne Lambert as Ann Atwater
Zero Steiert as C.P. Ellis
Cornelius Johnson as Bill Riddick
Paula Scheider as Mary Ellis