Last week the Tulsa World announced the creation of the TATE Awards, a project funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation to honor and reward the best in locally produced and created theater.
The awards (an acronym for Tulsa Award for Theatre Excellence) range from a top prize of $10,000 for outstanding production of a play -- either comedy or drama -- to $2,500 for outstanding children's production. All told, $20,000 in potential prize money.
The reaction to this news by the Tulsa theater community: well, pretty much silence.
It could very well be that the majority of the people involved in theater in Tulsa have been away on vacation for the past week and will likely learn of the awards through word-of-mouth, or reading last Sunday's story about the TATE awards online.
Or it could be that the possibility of winning $10,000 -- a figure that easily represents the annual budget for several years of most of the community theater groups in the area -- has taken the Tulsa theater community's collective breath away, and once respiration recommences, they'll be all for the awards.
It's also possible that the majority of theater companies in Tulsa believe they are not likely to be considered for the awards, since most of the shows these companies present are musicals, and musicals are not being considered as part of the TATE awards first season.
What I hope is NOT the case is that local theater groups decide that the work they do isn't worthy of being considered for the TATE Awards. Because to take that opinion is to defeat the purpose of offering the prizes in the first place.
Theater has long been the "red-haired stepchild" (full disclosure -- I have a wonderfully lovely niece named Stephanie who has red hair, is the step-child of my sister's husband and is thoroughly loved and appreciated by all who have the privilege of knowing her) in the Tulsa arts community.
There was a time in the 1980s when local theater had great ambitions and the means and talent to achieve those ambitions, to be taken as seriously as the larger, professional organizations of ballet, opera and orchestra. For whatever reason -- lack of money, the loss to other locales of people with vision and energy, the domineering influence of television, among others -- theater in Tulsa never has managed to do much more than exist on the fringe of people's awareness.
Still, there is -- and has always been -- very talented people in Tulsa who, in spite of everything, have devoted their lives to creating theater in this town. And it is the efforts of these people -- who are trying to make audience laugh and think and feel, who offer like-minded artists the opportunity to use their talents regularly to these ends -- that the TATE Awards wants to recognize.
Let me toss an idea out there for those who are thinking of submitting their shows for judging in the TATE Awards:
Should you win the top prize of $10,000, put half the money in the bank to be used however you see fit. But take the other half, and use that to create a completely new work of theater. Commission a script from a local playwright. Hire the best actors this town has AND PAY THEM FOR THEIR WORK with something more than free tickets to the show. Offer as part of the next SummerStage, a world premiere play -- a work of art created by Tulsa artists for Tulsa audiences.
Use the money to show this city what you can do in the art form to which you've given yourself.
