World Stage Theatre Company: “Ages of the Moon”
World Stage Studio
April 17 & 18, 2025 (performances run through April 27)
I don’t get men. There are myriad reasons for this; I’m sure you can imagine a few. So, when I saw that World Stage Theatre Company was producing Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard’s Ages of the Moon—a play about men, starring two men, written by a man whose work often dealt with masculinity—I wrote it in my calendar in pen. I wanted to learn something.
And, because the play was double-cast, with two pairs of actors doing alternating performances, I decided to see it twice.
Seeing a show at World Stage’s storefront theatre at 11th and Harvard is like seeing a show at your grandmother’s house during a family reunion. The front room is filled with eclectic furnishings where attendees, the technical crew and World Stage board members chat and sip drinks while they wait for the show to start. For those who know someone in the theatre community, it’s very Tulsa: every time you decide it’s time to find your seat, someone else you know walks in, or you’re introduced to someone new through a mutual friend. This, of course, prompts further conversation, and the process repeats until you really have to go sit down.
World Stage Studio, photobomb by Angela McLaughlin | photo by Alex Isaak
The playing space is similarly intimate, with seating for about 40 that places the audience right in front of the actors. At Ages of the Moon, pre-show music by Eric Strauss set the tone with the help of a guitar, a banjo and at one point, a haunting saw. Strauss engaged with the audience between each song, and when it was time to start the play, he’d look shyly to director Angela McLaughlin, who’d give him a “you’re good” and he’d shuffle off to the side of the stage. While he packed his things, you could hear the stage manager behind you, calling for the company’s founder to turn off the house lights as McLaughlin waited on the other side of the stage to give her curtain speech.
Anywhere else, this audible backstage business would come across as unprofessional, but here, it aligns with the organization’s mission to demystify the austerity of “the theatre,” with the goal of making all audiences feel like it’s for them. When the cast walks out and the show begins, you forget it happened in the first place, enraptured by the sheer talent on stage. The actors who share the roles in Shepard’s play—Adrian Alexander, Andy Axewell, David Blakely and Timothy Hunter—have a staggering 280 years of acting experience among them, and it shows.