El Jay Productions and the Edison Foundation: "Ahead of Their Time"
Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Liddy Doenges Theatre
September 10, 2026
It felt like a true homecoming last Thursday evening at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. As the lights dimmed to start the first performance of the regional premiere of Ahead of Their Time, a near-capacity, electric crowd chatted, hugged, and waved at each other from across the house of the Liddy Doenges Theatre.
And it was, in fact, a homecoming. Playwright, director, and Edison High School graduate Jameson White brought her original play to her hometown after two stagings in New York: one at Molloy University, where she earned her BFA in 2025, another at the New York Theatre Festival. A Tulsa production makes sense, as this is a deeply personal story for White, one that, per her director’s note, “has existed within me since I was born.”
Beginning in 1893 on a boat to Ellis Island and spanning more than 100 years to Tulsa in 2022, the play chronicles a collection of family stories that span four generations of women on White’s mother’s side: Italian immigrant Rose, her daughter-in-law Eleanor Jane (or EJ), EJ’s daughter Rosa Jane, and Rosa Jane’s daughter Diane, who is the playwright’s mother. In a tight script with no time to waste, a series of vignettes shows key moments in these women’s lives as they navigate family, work, and love.
Indeed, White’s family history practically writes the story itself. We meet an immigrant who has to choose between a stable green card marriage and the sudden, impractical blossom of love with a fellow Italian; a widow who has to make some smart business decisions and an unfortunate relationship decision to provide for her daughter in the 1940s; an artist who drops out of college to follow her college sweetheart to Japan; a budding young journalist trying to listen to her heart while grieving a tragic loss.
A polished ensemble of actors, some joining local talent from the play’s New York engagements, confidently brought this 90-minute story to life. L’aria Krautter brought the energy and showed great duality as EJ’s firecracker sister-in-law Josephine and the standoffish receptionist. Drew Sears was deeply believable as 1950s fraternity boy Charley, Rosa Jane’s eventual first husband; his performance grounded me in the time period throughout the show. Katie Blackwell and Scott Bratton had a lively, humorous rapport as brother-sister duo Diane and Jimmy.
Some of these actors had the additional task of playing characters at a vast variety of ages. Giovanni Antonio incorporated a great physicality shift from teenage to elder Dale, Rosa Jane’s high school boyfriend, whom she encounters at a reunion decades later. Mikaela Bonilla had the biggest lift as Rosa Jane, portraying her from age eight all the way through her 60s. Her purposeful alteration to her posture, walk, and voice throughout the play was subtle but effective in evoking aging without “playing old.”