The Black Cat Theatre Café Grand Opening ft. The 66 Kicks
The Black Cat Theatre Café, 1615 E 3rd St Unit B
August 29, 2026
Like a lot of things about The Black Cat Theatre Café, its grand opening hitting at the leading edge of spooky season feels weirdly correct. Did they time the opening like that on purpose, because of the name, or was it a chef’s-kiss coincidence, or maybe a bit of both?
Appropriately for a space that’s set to house all manner of improv and live performance, it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s planned and what’s spontaneous here, and that imperceptible line is what makes it so good. Kismet is welcome, but the work takes discipline; when the setup is solid, what happens inside it is free to go wild—like, say, two women flirting in a pickup bar with instant replay amenities, which is the improv scene I walked in on as I arrived a little late and slipped into a comfy seat at the edge of the packed crowd full of musicians, actors, and other creative-madness-adjacent Tulsans.
The situation at The Black Cat didn’t seem that different from the Blonde tribute at LowDown I’d just rushed over from: a sleek room big enough to relax in but small enough to enjoy a random shoulder brush with a neighbor, a stage that seems able to hold way more activity that its size would suggest, a template (in this case, the structure of a 66 Kicks show) that ingeniously balances the known and the unknown.
This new space—yes, there is an actual kitschy-kitchen-esque café called The Olive inside the black box theatre, and it'll have regular hours next year—is an offshoot of Cody Mayo Studios, which has operated on Studio Row for the past several years as a full-service hub for training in acting, auditioning, improv, public speaking, and the like. At CMS, Mayo and Ryan “Arch” Archibald (a veteran of Chicago’s legendary Second City) kicked off The 66 Kicks, a professional improv group; the training they offer has now spawned a handful of other improv teams, all of which are performing regularly at The Black Cat. Still to come in the new venue: a theatre troupe called Ninth Life, original shows like the upcoming R-rated Edgar Allan Poe-inspired Nightfall, and a month-long family-friendly Halloween experience (magicians, jugglers, circus performers) called Nevermore Season.