Thirty years ago, composer Jackie Dempsey and artist Steve O’Hearn created their first show in a Pittsburgh junkyard, with choreographed cranes, roaring earthmovers and screaming machine shears.
Since then, as Squonk, the duo has collaborated with dozens of artists to create post-industrial performances with original music, design and staging, operating outside the rules of mass culture, fashion or academia.
Squonk will come to Tulsa this week, as part of the spring break activities happening at the Gathering Place, 2560 S. John Williams Way.
Each day of spring break, Squonk will perform its latest show, “Hand to Hand,” a participatory event that features Squonk’s live, upbeat music, along with two giant purple puppet hands, each the size of a house and rigged like a sailing ship, and designed so the audience can grab the rigging to manipulate the hands and be part of the show.
Squonk defines its approach to the work it does this way: “We create work that is fast, funny, shameless and inclusive: an art that will include the cheap thrills of a monster truck show, as well as the fragile beauty of the hothouse flowers created in artist lofts. We will let art, high and low, battle for our souls. We will let music and design struggle for supremacy. Let science and art have at it. Mano a mano.”
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For showtimes for “Hand to Hand,” and a complete list of spring break activities at the Gathering Place: gatheringplace.org/springbreak22.
ATC presents ‘Laughing Wild’
These days, it’s all too common to hear stories of people coming to blows in a supermarket. But it was a rare occurrence some 35 years ago, when playwright Christopher Durang created “Laughing Wild.”
Durang’s play revolves around an incident in which a woman struck a fellow shopper who wouldn’t move from in front of the cans of tuna so she could select the brand she wanted.
In a monologue, the woman describes, as well as her highly emotional state will allow, what really happened that day. This is followed by the victim of her assault, whose efforts to put a positive spin on things quickly spiral in darker directions. And when the two finally meet to work out the truth of the matter, things really get out of hand.
American Theatre Company will present “Laughing Wild,” with performances at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, March 18-19 and 25-26; 2 p.m. Sunday March 20 and 27, at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St. Tickets are $22-$26. 918-596-7111, tulsapac.com.
Last chance for ‘Tootsie’
The Tulsa run of “Tootsie,” the musical adaptation of the 1982 film about a male actor who dresses as a middle-aged woman to get a job, is following a slightly different format from most of the shows Celebrity Attractions presents.
Typically, the final Sunday of a Celebrity Attractions show has two performances, but “Tootsie” will have only one show, 1 p.m. Sunday, March 13, at the Tulsa PAC, 101 E. Third St. The show added a Thursday matinee performance last week.
In its review, the Tulsa World described the show as a “high-minded farce… that for a couple of hours and change (allows the audience to) forget all the cares of the real world.”
Tickets are $34-$79. 918-596-7111, tulsapac.com.
Imani Winds free concert
The Grammy-nominated ensemble Imani Winds will present a free concert of music by woman composers, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 13, at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St. The program includes works by Valerie Coleman, Nathalie Joachim, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Tania León. A pre-concert lecture on the music to be performed will begin at 2:15 p.m. Admission is free, but reservations are suggested. chambermusictulsa.org.
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
