From a Brony comedy to an outdoor audio tour, OKC Repertory Theater launches new season

Oklahoma City Repertory Theater is exploring the magical world of Bronies and Pegasisters, road-tripping through a romantic comedy set after the fall of Saigon and bringing back a popular outdoor experience with its new season.

With the theme "Right Here, Right Now," OKC Rep's 2023-2024 subscription season will include four shows at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center's Te Ata Theater, with an encore presentation of the outdoor title "Of a Mind: Oklahoma City" planned as an add-on production.

"When I was planning it, I was really thinking about adventure, but also fun and being able to laugh, which is not always the case in our daily lives at the moment, if you look at any headlines," OKC Rep Artistic Director Kelly Kerwin told The Oklahoman.

It's the second full season programmed by Kerwin, who also planned OKC Rep's 2022 "Reboot" run.  

"I've done a lot of different things ... and it just really felt like the audiences have always been along for the ride, that they are very open to coming to something even if they don't exactly know what it is, which is a great theater audience to have," Kerwin told The Oklahoman.

Here's what OKC Rep is planning for its 2023-2024 season:

'The Antelope Party'

When: Oct. 12-22.

The award-winning regional theater will venture into the world of Bronies and Pegasisters — adult fans of the animated series "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" — with the season opener, Eric John Meyer's "The Antelope Party."

The dark comedy centers on a rural Pennsylvania Brony group whose enchanted role-playing is disrupted by fear and paranoia.

"I will admit, I did not know what a Brony was until I read this play," Kerwin said. "I love plays about misfits. I love plays about underdogs. I love plays about people just finding and just being their true selves. And that's what Bronies are."

Directed by Texan Jesse Jou, OKC Rep's production features a cast made up entirely of Oklahoma actors.

Sydney Bruner, Annie Funke, Tyler Malinauskas, Justin Mayer and Gillian O’Daniel will all make their OKC Rep debut with "The Antelope Party," and Alexi Smith returns after making a strong impression last season with Emily Zemba's unconventional show "Superstitions."

'Looking for Tiger Lily'

When: Nov. 16-18.

The season will continue with "Looking for Tiger Lily," written and performed by Anthony Hudson, aka "the human vessel for Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi."

"Many of the shows Anthony does are completely Carla, but this particular show, Anthony starts out as Carla and then becomes Anthony," Kerwin said.

"A lot of Carla Rossi shows are big and wild and draggy and messy in the most wonderful, beautiful ways. I think all those things are within this piece, but it's also about what it was like growing up half white, half Native, queer and trying to figure out how you fit in this world."

The Oregon performer (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Siletz) uses song, dance, video and drag to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling. 

Under the Radar: On the Road

When: Jan. 25-28.

OKC Rep again will ring in the New Year by partnering with Under the Radar: On the Road, a program that brings new works from New York City's Under the Radar Festival to Oklahoma City.

Last year, OKC audiences got to see Inua Ellams' poetic one-man show "An Evening with an Immigrant" even after an outbreak of the COVID-19 omicron variant canceled the NYC festival. In January, esteemed actor and playwright Roger Guenveur Smith traveled from New York to Oklahoma City to perform his solo stage show "Otto Frank," in which he depicts the Jewish Holocaust survivor who famously published the diary of his late daughter, Anne Frank. 

Although New York's Public Theater announced over the summer that it wouldn't produce the 2024 Under the Radar Festival as it has for the previous 17 years, Kerwin said she is working with Under the Radar founder and Director Mark Russell, who owns the intellectual property rights to the festival, to keep bringing a new work to OKC every season.

The title for the 2024 installment of the Under the Radar: On the Road partnership won't be announced until closer to the Jan. 25-28 OKC run. 

'Vietgone'

When: Feb. 29-March 9.

OKC Rep will close its 2023-2024 main stage season with Qui Nguyen's "Vietgone," billed as an "all-American love story about two very new Americans."

Set in 1975 after the fall of Saigon has ended the Vietnam War, the show is both a romantic comedy and a cross-country road trip. Nikki DiLoreto will direct. 

"In Oklahoma City, there's a big Asian population, and this Asian population haven't seen themselves represented on stage very often in theater," Kerwin said.

"This specific piece really gives voice to the Vietnamese refugee story that has happened here in Oklahoma City ... with rapping and music and ninjas."

Last year, Kerwin brought Lauren Yee's play "The Great Leap," about Tiananmen Square and basketball, to the Sooner State as part of OKC Rep's 2022-2023 season.

"I've been thinking about 'Vietgone' since I took this job, because it is about the experience of some Vietnamese refugees, but it's also the experience of just being an American. ... It is based on the true story of the playwright's parents, and it's about two people falling in love. They go on a motorcycle road trip from Arkansas, through Oklahoma, through the Southwest, and along the way, they encounter various adventures," Kerwin said.

'Of a Mind: Oklahoma City'

When and where: May 9-June 2, downtown OKC.

For a season add-on, OKC Rep is bringing back its spring 2022 hit "Of a Mind: Oklahoma City," an inventive and immersive guided audio tour exploring OKC's urban core.   

Kerwin told The Oklahoman that she decided to bring back "Of a Mind: OKC" by popular request. 

"I'd heard from so many people either that they loved it and they want to do it again, or that they were so bummed that they missed it. Given that it's only for 30 people at a time ... there were fewer opportunities for people to see it the first time we did it," she said. "It just has been something that so many people have asked me if we're going to bring back and do it again.

Kerwin developed "Of a Mind: OKC" with an international group of collaborators, including Zemba, a New York playwright originally from Connecticut; sound designer Tyler Kieffer, who hails from New Orleans but is based in New York City; composer Kevin McNamara, an Irishman who is also a music therapist; and Hugh Farrell, a Dubliner who leads with Kieffer an artist collective called Listen and Breathe.  

"Spring can be a wonderful time in Oklahoma City ... to get outside and walk around and see what's happening in downtown Oklahoma City, because it also has changed. We're gonna have to update the tour some because some of Oklahoma downtown has changed. So, it'll be a little different for the folks that have done it the first time," Kerwin said.

How can theater fans get OKC Rep tickets?  

Ticket packages for the 2023-2024 main stage season are on sale at https://www.okcrep.org/tickets, along with single tickets to "The Antelope Party."

Single tickets for the other 2023-2024 OKC Rep shows at Oklahoma Contemporary, along with tickets to the encore presentation for "Of a Mind: OKC," will go on sale later in the season.

OKC Rep is maintaining its mission of making theater accessible to everyone: The theater continues to offer sliding-scale ticket prices and Pay-What-You-Can options. 

"We're balancing the ticket revenue that we do need in order to function as an organization, while also continuing to make OKC Rep accessible to the community at large, because I really believe that theater is for everyone," Kerwin said. "People here have not necessarily had theater at their fingertips, like in other cities. So, I want that to be felt here."

For more information, go to okcrep.org.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: An OKC theater is starting its new season with a comedy about Bronies