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PrintLunch With - Chad Oliverson, marketing manager for the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust
Place: The White Owl on Cherry StreetÂ
Time: 11:30 a.m. Date: April 14 Place: The White Owl on Cherry Street 
The first time I met Chad Oliverson, he looked like something out of “The Rocky Horror Show.” Well, he was something out of “The Rocky Horror Show” — the outrageous Dr. Frank ’N’ Furter, a part he’s played several times for Tulsa audiences, always to deserved laughs. A couple of seasons ago, I was doing a short piece on the “Halloweenie” spoof. During the photo shoot, he and two other cast members wearing their wack-a-doo costumes had everyone cackling and chortling as they turned poses, preening for the camera.
Since then, I’ve had the chance to know Oliverson a little bitty bit better, and can testify that this is just him — every day. Sans the makeup, of course. He is like a self-charging energy cell, a singular brainstorm with opinions on everything from concrete countertops to boorish strangers to Mayor Kathy Taylor. Loves ‘em; would love to tell ’em off — but doesn’t; thinks she’s a dynamo.
In fact, he says, “I’d be head of her fan club. I’d buy the doll, the sleeping bag … the whole line.”
Underneath this finely honed sense of comic exaggeration is a streak long and wide of kindness.
Recently, he met photographer Michelle Pollard and me to talk about the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust (TPACT) SummerStage season. Before we could settle in, he was cracking comments in rapid succession like some Robin Williams clone. I take a digital recorder on interviews. I timed it. Ten minutes straight laughing, the kind that leaves you gasping for breath. I know; you had to be there.
But Oliverson is one serious funny man. And because he also is an actor, he’s a true believer in his cause.
A theater/communications major, he landed in Tulsa because of family ties. He started in the PAC ticket office and worked his way up. He continues to act and has lost count of the number of shows in which he’s acted.
“Theater is my background, Tulsa is my home, so on an unselfish level, I want Tulsa to totally rock, and on a selfish level, theater has to survive for me to do what I do,” he says. “I am never content with any project I work on … I always want more to happen.”
In his role as the Trust’s marketing guy, he can spout all the proper economic development numbers. And how the Trust’s privately funded grants program supports local nonprofit performing arts groups, and in doing so broadens and diversifies, topically and culturally, what is available to arts lovers. A TPACT season might include anything from Oklahoman Tracy Letts‘ Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway show, “August: Osage County” (coming January 2010) to the current Summer Stage lineup, an eight-week festival of musicals, drama, comedy, dance and cabaret theater. During that time, the Trust funds theater workshops “to enhance our already talented companies,” he says. And that’s just one series he and boss Shirley Elliott (backed by an impressive board) pull together for our viewing pleasure.
They must be doing something right. The Trust’s 2008-09 season ended up in the black; its ticket revenues were 17 percent above the national average. Oliverson thinks he knows why.
“People will save their dollars … not get a new refrigerator, but they will go to the Elton John concert,” he contends. “They need entertainment … they need an escape.”
But he also believes there’s a deeper reason, one that tells on this kidder: “Art is all around us and it magnifies the human experience,” he says. “Without it, we are robots.”
