By Alex Szewlow
Despite its unique-for-the-town architectural style, it’s easy to overlook the snow white building on the northwest corner of Thompson and Water. A stately old building in its own right, the building that once housed Sapulpa’s Church of Christ, Scientist has been a home for area actors and their big dreams for over 30 years. It has offered an artistic outlet for has-beens and wannabes, and for seasoned actors and timidly-curious alike. Its black box stage has come alive with countless colors on countless sets, and offered the Sapulpa area some of the best performances this side of the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River.
It has seen its ups and downs. Not so long ago, it looked extinction in the eye and came roaring back from oblivion’s iron grip. It lay silent during pandemic, and was one of the first theatres in the area to breathe post-Covid culture into a society groaning for artistic breath. It has been a house of laughter and a house of drama, both on stage and off – as all good theatres are wont to be. Rumor has it the place is even haunted by a ghost-in-resident by the name of Babs.
Yet the theatre that lives in that venerable old building remains one of Sapulpa’s best-kept secrets. A surprised “Oh, I didn’t know Sapulpa had a theatre!” is the common reaction when unaware ears first learn of its existence. And that reaction happens far more often than it should. It seems to be a fact of life in a world where technology’s reach extends farther than it ever has before. In an age in which visual entertainment is dominated by screen and electronic devices, it is easy to overlook the offerings produced in that gleaming white building. It begs a question; does live theatre still have a place among today’s screen-captured masses?
With screen-based entertainment living in virtually every pocket and every purse in even the most remote areas of every continent on the planet, the answer to that question seems an easy no. Do you want to watch videos of traumatized cats screeching and hissing at their tormentors? There’s a website for that. Do you want to watch the as-it-happened launch of Gemini VI and an interview with the astronauts who flew it? There’s a website for that. Oh, and you can get that website on your 60-inch television. Do you want to watch that movie you really wanted to see in the cinema but just never seem to have the time or the patience to go to the movie theatre where, you swear, you will never again plunk down more money for an obscenely big “small” tub of popcorn and huge “small” soda than you paid for than you paid for the movie ticket itself, while cursing under your breath the rude soul three rows in front of you who just can’t seem to stop watching something…on their bright phone screen?
It’s like a moth drawn irresistibly to light. Only this light is an artificial light that results in lost time, lost money, and sprained relationships. It’s like eating candy, and nothing but candy, three meals a day and remaining blissfully unaware of the diabetes ravaging the body.
Then there is theatre. Not the theatre. But simply theatre. Retired Hollywood heavyweight Richard Dreyfus, known in movie lore, for among other things, slaying that great white shark known as Jaws, said in a recent interview, “If you want to be an actor in America, you can fulfill that…in almost any city in America because they have local, and they have regional, and they have Shakespeare. But if you want to be a movie star then you have to go to L.A. or New York.” Put in sporting terms, being a movie star is like playing in the N.F.L. Regional is like playing college ball.
But live, local theatre is something honest. It’s something pure. It’s something you can reach out you hand and touch. It can rival anything Broadway has to offer. Not only is it live, but it is alive. And it is for everyone. It offers the theatregoer the opportunity to do a night on the town without crossing the county line. It offers the curious an opportunity to get involved in a culture that fosters solid, strong bonds with others of common interests. Many is the uncertain, first-time auditioner who blossoms into a theatre mainstay. Indeed, Dreyfus himself has stated on many occasions his preference for performing in live theatre.
With the curtain rising this week on Sapulpa Community Theatre’s 2023 season, there has seldom been a better time to give the screen a break, witness firsthand the quality acting, and experience the simple joy of a night at the theatre. Sapulpa may not be New York, and Dewey Avenue may not be Broadway. But then again, it just might be.
