I’m guessing that Thomas Hardy, the 19th Century British literary figure, never met Thomas Duncan, the famed vocalist with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, despite the fact that they both had something to say about how, you know, things become different as time wears on. I never met either of those Thomases, but I know a third one — my good pal Thomas Conner. And he and I appropriated the “Time Changes Everything” title (we were thinking, frankly, of the Duncan-penned song rather than the Hardy maxim) for our one-act imagining of two meetings between the Oklahoma music icons Woody Guthrie and Mr. Wills, which I’m proud to say will be presented as a part of Tulsa’s SummerStage festival this year.
TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING, the play, is set for June 25th in the Liddy Doenges Theatre at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. Thomas and I have been able to get John Cooper and Brad Piccolo of the Red Dirt Rangers to portray, respectively, Bob Wills and Woody Guthrie, and the entire batch of Rangers to come out in the second half of the show and play a selection of Wills and Guthrie tunes.
The SummerStage production will mark the play’s debut, although we did have a table reading with Cooper and Piccolo at the Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah last August, which drew a standing ovation and the teary-eyed approval of Woody’s sister Mary Jo (he says humbly, digging his toe into the carpet).
The premise is simple: Guthrie and Wills meet twice, their two encounters separated by some 15 years, and talk about themselves, their music and their lives. As far as Thomas and I have been able to ascertain, and we’ve done some research that included talking to close relatives of both men, they never actually met. But Thomas, a Guthrie scholar who got a grant to study the man at Columbia University, and I – a Wills fan from ‘way back – have long been intrigued by the differences in the two musical giants and their contrasting approaches to their profession.
Now, the Performing Arts Center Trust has given us the chance to share, and we’re grateful. We’re also grateful to Tulsa’s top stage director, Vern Stefanic, whom we can’t afford but who has agreed to direct the play anyway. A longtime friend and occasional collaborator of mine, Vern agreed to direct Time Changes Everything in return for my not telling anyone about his excised appearance in Weird Al Yankovic’s Tulsa-shot film UHF (1989). Hey, consider it done, pal.
So, please mark your calendars for June 25 and join us for the intergalactic premiere of Time Changes Everything. We’ll have more news here as it becomes available. You can also check out the Tulsa SummerStage Facebook page.
for info . . . which brings me to my next topic.
Although I hold a master’s degree in English, I had not known until a few weeks ago that “friend” could be used as a verb. I have learned this courtesy of my older son and webmaster, Jonathan, who set me up on Facebook back in late February – despite my being, shall we say, considerably beyond the Facebook demographic.
What was I thinking? I was thinking I needed to do it because at the first meeting of SummerStage producers, Chad Oliverson, marketing and public-relations manager for Tulsa’s Performing Arts Center Trust, emphasized to us all how important a marketing tool Facebook was for our productions. Chad told us we should all get on it post haste, or words to that effect.
Unfortunately for me, he didn’t tell me what to do once I got there.
I’ve kind of figured a few things out, thanks to Jonathan and my other savvy son, Steven, who both explained that people I knew would want to “friend” me once I joined up, and that I should “friend” them back. So I’ve been “friending” the hell out of everyone who pops up on the site, and they’ve been “friending” me. Some of the people “friending” me are my “friends” in real life. (Overuse of quotation marks for allegedly humorous purposes stolen from Dave Barry.) Some are good acquaintances and former co-workers I’m fond of. Some are people whose name I’ve heard or whose work I’ve enjoyed. And a few seem to have beamed in from the planet Neptune. But I’m just promiscuous about it. You want to be my friend? Swell? Hop aboard, everybody! More the merrier! WA-HOO!
Now, though, I’m starting to understand that I’m supposed to do more than just join up. As I write this, I’ve been “friended” by 181 people, That’s swell, but some of them are asking me things about which I have no clue. And not only that, but they’re asking each other questions about me. I punch up the site every couple of days and stare warily at it for a while, and it looks as though people are wanting me to participate in fun things, surveys and such. But I’m too freaked out to allow myself to poke around for more than a few minutes.
Of course, we’re all afraid of what we don’t understand – a theme expressed again and again in popular culture, as I remind my OSU-Tulsa horror-movie class boringly often – and I think I’m subliminally afraid that if I type the wrong thing, some cyber-tentacle is going to burst from the screen and wrap around my neck, pulling me into a hellish place where I’m forced to fight off spiders with darning needles like Grant Williams in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN while responding to each and every Facebook question and request — including the one I got a few days ago telling me someone had thrown beads at me, and asking did I want to throw beads back? I mean, you know, I don’t see any beads. Where are the beads? WHERE ARE THE FREAKING BEADS?
I have no doubt that I’ll get better at this, eventually, and if you’re one of the cyberhip, you’ll probably dismiss this as simply a Grandpa Simpson-esque rant. But I really am confused; it seems to me that if you really wanted to do this Facebook thing right, you’d have to spend several hours a day on it.
I don’t have that kind of time. But I do plan to post something about this website blog on my Facebook page. Is that hypocricy, or just opportunism?
Finally, the half-hour documentary BILL BOYCE – MONEY ACTOR – which debuted last year at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema, is now available for purchase via PayPal. (PayPal — now there’s an internet idea I can handle.)
A ten-spot gets you the remarkable story of Mr. Boyce, Oklahoma-born star of THE SLIME PEOPLE, who not only romanced Marilyn but kicked Elvis’s butt in touch football. Leo (HELL HIGH) Evans directed it, I produced and wrote it, and award-winning young filmmaker Jonathan (WITCH COP) Wooley (whom I’m planning to gravy-train in my old age) edited it.
Get it in an attractive case, postage paid, for $10.
