The first performance, "Rhapsodic Rhythms" took place on October 4, 1937. The Municipal Auditorium was completed in April 1937. Bellows Construction became the primary contractor and began on-site excavation on time. In August 1935, the Roosevelt Administration announced that all PWA projects had to break ground by December 1935 or risk losing federal support. The original design features a six-story building with both neoclassical and Art Deco features that seated 6,200 in the main hall and smaller theatre that seated 400. Parr began planning and designing the Municipal Auditorium, budgeted at $1.25 million. Roosevelt's New Deal programs in the 1930s contributed 55 percent of the cost of building through the Public Works Administration. In 1927, the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and the city jointly purchased the land that would become home to a municipal auditorium after voters approved a $4 million bond for the site. 2 Foundation and volunteer organizations.
#FREEDE LITTLE THEATRE PROFESSIONAL#
The center is home to seven professional arts organizations: Canterbury Voices, OKC Broadway, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Ballet, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Oklahoma City Rep, and Painted Sky Opera. Together they serve more than 300,000 patrons at around 250 performances at four different stages each year. The Civic Center Music Hall is managed and operated in conjunction with the Rose State Performing Arts Theatre. The facility includes the Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre, the Freede Little Theatre, CitySpace, the Meinders Hall of Mirrors and the Joel Levine Rehearsal Hall. It was constructed in 1937 as Municipal Auditorium and renamed in 1966.
The Civic Center Music Hall is a performing arts center located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre: 2,477 Lyric staged Pageant in 20 at Freede Little Theatre. Dawn Drake Toney’s set and props credibly reflect a B-list pageant and make good use of the Plaza Theatre stage, enhanced by Aaron Mooney’s lighting design. You can’t fault the actors for lack of effort. The cast and designers bought into director Ashley Wells’ concept for the show. It’s the funniest 30 seconds in the show. She liked it.Īt one point, Frankie pays tribute to the production’s wardrobe supervisor, whose name and particulars will not be revealed here. And Miss Bible Belt (Christopher Sieker) combines religion and business in a way that could win her the Iowa Republican caucuses.Īmong the pageant’s competitions are talent, swimsuit and “beauty-crisis counseling.” Contestants’ talents include baton twirling, tap dancing, interpretive dance, recitation and ventriloquism.Ī host of real, past-and-present pageant winners were in the audience at the reviewed performance, including Miss Oklahoma and Miss Gay Oklahoma.Īt intermission, I asked Miss Teen Moore-Norman what she thought of the show. Miss Deep South (Shane Pruitt) is prim-and-proper to the extreme. The tomboyish Miss Great Plains (Sheridan McMichael) acts as if she’d rather be anywhere else but here. Miss Industrial Northeast (Ross McCorkell) is an earthy Latina whose talent is playing the accordion while roller-skating. Beware of Miss Texas (Tanner Lee Hanley) if she loses the tiara. Miss West Coast (James Michael Avance) acts a little stoned. The Miss Glamouresse pageant draws contestants from throughout the country with personalities to match. Frankie introduces the contestants in “Natural Born Females” (which we know they aren’t), and the company follows that number with “Something Extra.”įor anyone who still hasn’t caught on, Frankie ends the song gesturing toward a contestant’s crotch. You won’t find the faintest trace of subtlety in this show. This must have sounded like a brilliant idea a quarter century ago.įrankie Cavalier (Monte Riegel Wheeler in a black pompadour with a gray streak that recalls The Bride of Frankenstein), who is “tender yet macho and hot as a nacho,” emcees with smarmy savoir-faire. The show’s conceit is male actors play the female characters. Pageant (Bill Russell and Frank Kelly, book and lyrics Albert Evans, music) depicts a contest to select Miss Glamouresse, the heavily made-up face of a fictional purveyor of beauty products. One wonders about that while watching Lyric Theatre’s tepid production of Pageant: A Musical Comedy Beauty Contest, a 1991 spoof about as outré as a ham sandwich – and just as hammy. Perhaps theatrical drag shows run their course. Orignially published on February 11, 2015 Published by Oklahoma Gazette – Read original article here
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