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Get ready for the season with these classic events and new holiday traditions the entire family will enjoy.
A “Wonderful” new tradition
It’s probably a holiday tradition at your house — popping in the DVD of the Frank Capra classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore, and maybe even shedding a few happy tears at the end.
A new Tulsa theater group, The Playhouse Theatre, is offering an opportunity for local audiences to hear this Christmas classic in a different format. The group will present five performances of “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” in December at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.
In this version, the group will ask audiences to turn on their imaginations as five fictional actors, using sound effects, create a “play within a play,” set in one location onstage — a radio station, circa the 1940s.
So, how did The Playhouse Theatre hear about this version of “It’s a Wonderful Life”?
“Chris Crawford (Playhouse artistic director) was working at the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre last summer and it was recommended to him,” show director Courtneay Sanders says. “We had never heard of it before, but he (Crawford) ordered it, and we thought it was just a charming show and the perfect choice for Playhouse’s first Christmas production.”
Sanders says the show does present challenges.
“Well, we aren’t Jimmy Stewart or Donna Reed, so there is that,” she says. “Seriously, though … theatrically, with any show, it is difficult to stage the scenes with the actors working off the microphones and not blocking the scenes to show a physical relationship between the characters.
“The ‘radio’ audience isn’t seeing the physical actors. Every relationship has to be established vocally, not physically. With this play in particular, everyone is used to seeing the film image of George (Stewart’s character) running through the streets of Bedford Falls, seeing him pick up his daughter and have that ‘bell rings’ moment in front of the tree with Mary (Reed’s character).
“The audience won’t be seeing those scenes, so we’ll have to create those images for them without voices. They will have to see it through their imagination.”
Expect a lot of laughter, Sanders says.
“Each of the actors will play numerous roles, and the ‘radio’ audience will think they are hearing 60 different actors,” she says. The “live” audience will get to see the actors switch roles. “It will be exciting for the audience to physically ‘see’ what they would be imagining in their mind’s eye if they were only listening via radio.
“Events in the theater never really happen the way we as the audience think they do. This show provides a glimpse into the backstage antics of a production. Anything can (and does) happen!”
Cast members include Tabitha Littlefield, John Knippers, Jonathan Schrader, Travis Cox and Barbara Murn.
Sound effects will be “produced the old-fashioned way,” Sanders says. “We’ll be transporting our audiences back in time.”
“It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” will be presented at 8 p.m., Dec. 15-20, and 2 p.m., Dec. 19-20, at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. It is co-sponsored by KWGS Radio.
How to make a gingerbread house
Mix nine enthusiastic members of an elementary school football team clad in Santa hats with a papier–mâché house; round red, green and silver plastic beads; roped pearl beads; silver star decorations; two bags of homemade white powdered sugar icing; and a bottle of glue, and what do you get?
A decorated gingerbread house for Philbrook Museum of Art’s Gingerbread Village at its 25th annual Festival of Trees, as well as some laughter and a lot of messy fun.
Led by Jill Parr, craft leader and mom to one of the team members, the second-grade boys (and their one female teammate and a friend) spent an hour during an early warm October afternoon preparing their yearly contribution.
“What did we make for Festival of Trees last year?” Parr asks the group.
“An airplane!” several boys answer. Parr says the group interpreted last year’s Southwest theme with two Southwest Airlines airplanes: a jet with a New Mexico flag on the side and a plane in the shape of Shamu, Sea World’s killer whale.
The year before that, they tackled a replica of Bartlesville’s Price Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper.
“It was really tall,” says Parr, who has helped this group with their entry for the last four years and has participated in the Gingerbread Village a total of 13 years with her three sons.
Parr says that for this year’s creation, she bought a ready-made papier–mâché house at Hobby Lobby, cut out doors and windows and iced it with powdered sugar frosting she made the night before the decorating party.
“Which beads should we use to decorate the windows and doors?” she asks the team.
“Red!” says one boy.
“No, green!” says another.
A compromise is decided in a red-green-red-green format.
“Very good! That looks great!” Parr says of the progress.
“I have learned from doing this through the years that, for us, using plastic beads and decorations work better because with candy, everything tends to melt, especially if we are making our entry several weeks early,” she says.
The house features a white-and-silver color scheme, in honor of Festival of Trees’ 25th anniversary, and it also includes a papier–mâché “2” and “5.” The powdered sugar icing is used to glue on the colored beads, pearl beads decorate the eaves, Starlight Mints form a patio surrounding the house and the top of the house is covered with stars, applied with glue.
“Glue makes the stars stick better,” Parr says. “I’ve also learned, after doing this for several years, to finish it as quickly as possible because, with boys, their enthusiasm starts to run out.”
The Gingerbread Village will be on display from Nov. 21-Dec. 13.
Sounds of the season
For the past 89 years, members of various Tulsa-area Lutheran churches have gathered to perform George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” in costume, portraying all of the characters of the Nativity.
For the singers, which can number 100, and 16-piece orchestra, Handel’s “Messiah” is more than a performance — it is a worship experience.
“The music and text are the sermon,” orchestra conductor Jim Boatwright says.
The present performance is jointly conducted by choir director Leon Boggs and Boatwright.
Although Tulsa First Lutheran Church has held the “Messiah” service since 1955, the church does not host it, Boatwright says.
Begun in 1921, Tulsa’s All-Lutheran Messiah was the brainchild of pastor’s wife/organist Sara Ruby Kauffman, who accompanied and directed the First Lutheran choir, clad even then in costumes, on a small reed organ.
Colored slides of the Nativity story were projected behind the choir as a backdrop, and are still used today.
A six-week rehearsal schedule begins at the end of October, prior to four performances on the first weekend of December.
Three to four hours are necessary to set up specially built choral risers, the stage and manger scene, which only fit in the First Lutheran pulpit, Boggs says.
“We have thought about sharing the location with other churches, but it would be too difficult to move the set, and besides, it’s traditional at First Lutheran,” he says. “When we all gather for the first rehearsal, it is a joyful family reunion.”
Boatwright agrees and says he enjoys seeing new faces as well.
“(It’s) exciting because we have new young people participating every year, as well as people who have been part of the group for more than 50 years,” he says.
All participants are volunteers, even the orchestra. Soloists are chosen by audition.
The All-Lutheran Messiah is governed by a board of directors with each church represented by one board member.
Often the attendance has been standing-room-only crowds at the always free performances, and reservations are not required.
“We never turn anyone away,” Boggs says, “but if one service is full, we ask people to come to one following.
“Many people have told me that Christmas doesn’t start for them until they experience our ‘Messiah.’ Other people say they have attended the ‘Messiah’ hundreds of times elsewhere, but they only get the real message of it when they hear us do it.”
The 89th annual All-Lutheran Messiah will be presented at 5 p.m. and 7:15 p.m., Dec. 5-6, at First Lutheran Church, 1244 S. Utica Ave.
For whom the bell tolls
Thinking of serving as a volunteer bell ringer for the Salvation Army this holiday season? Ben Gorrell can tell you what it’s like.
After all, he has been at it for 28 years.
Gorrell began volunteering to ring bells at the familiar red kettles in 1981, as a new member of the Southside Rotary Club, which offered bell ringing as a service project.
Southside Rotary has been ringing at the Woodland Hills Mall and Promenade Mall all those 28 years, too.
Gorrell shares a one-hour shift with another Southside Rotary member.
“There are always two of us,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun. It really gets you in the Christmas spirit, and you see all sorts of people.”
And in all kinds of Oklahoma weather.
“I’ve worn my ski suit in 0-degree weather and also short sleeves in 70-degree winter weather,” he says.
The kettles and bell ringing create “camaraderie and fellowship, and give you a chance to spend a small bit of time with someone you have never met,” Gorrell says.
Gorrell is surprised that many people who give to the kettles “often are ones who look like they could benefit from what Salvation Army offers,” he says.
The downturn in the economy hasn’t stopped Tulsans from giving to the kettles, at least from his perspective, says Gorrell, a local businessman.
“Tulsa has a big heart,” he says. “With your head down all day, working in an office, and then being at a kettle in the evening, (it) really puts you in the Christmas spirit, and it changes your perspective.”
The Red Kettle Drive runs Nov. 19-Dec. 24 at 126 Tulsa area locations. Saturday volunteers needed. Call 587-7801 or visit www.salvationarmytulsa.org.
