The Pickup's Culture coverage is brought to you by Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery, 40 Years of Empowering Tulsa Artists. Visit TAC Gallery to see American Highway Revisited by VC Torneden and Melinda Harvey Green, June 5 – 27, 2026.
Michael Wright is no stranger to experimental theatre. His work with The People Playhouse in New Orleans first sparked an interest in nontraditional performance, which later led to years of practice and international travel that introduced him to the work of artists like Viola Spolin, Jerzy Grotowski, and Richard Foreman. During his time in Tulsa, that experimental wind blew him to the Tulsa Artists’ Coalition Gallery, which for more than a decade has been the site of his own playful exploits, including a brand new piece premiering Friday and running through next weekend.
Experimental theatre can take different forms, and Wright’s repertoire at TAC has offered a feast of uniqueness through the years. In one of his shows, the audience played amateur detectives and were tasked with solving a fictional disappearance based on three stories they heard from actors and an evidence wall. Another year, the performance included a gallery of black and white photography as well as color photography of human faces depicting “emojis that don’t exist.” In another piece, Wright stewed apples during the performance and everyone got a warm snack at its conclusion.
While every experience is different, one element remains consistent: the audience is an active participant in the piece. In a conventional audience experience, the performers are on a stage and the audience sits in rows away from them in their own separate space. In Wright’s pieces, that orientation gets tweaked by adjusting where the audience sits in relation to the actors, adding moments where audience members move from their seats during the piece, and playing with how the audience views the action in the space (accomplished one year by placing mirrors around the gallery). It’s a flexibility allowed by nontraditional spaces like the TAC Gallery, where the lack of stage and risers allows the audience and the actors to intermingle.
“What happens to most people is that they have an expectation of what theatre should be,” says Wright. “My ambition is that the person that goes away from seeing one of [these] shows says to themselves, ‘Can I reexamine what I think about theatre?’”
Wright’s latest endeavor, entitled “Enchiridion of the Quotidian: Definitions of the Commonplace. A Performance Art Jam,” examines everyday life. “It’s the little things that we do that we don’t think of—the little miracles that are around us,” Wright explained before a rehearsal at the Herman & Kate Kaiser Library. “Something as simple as a spoon is a miraculous instrument if you think about it.”
Wright’s process always starts with the title, crafted specifically for his application to use the TAC Gallery. This year, he landed on the word “quotidian” (which means ordinary, commonplace, or occurring every day). “Enchiridion” followed, after referring to the dictionary for a rhyming word. He then wrote an explanation based on his title, submitted the application, promptly forgot what he said he was going to do, and got busy experimenting.
A few months out from opening night, Wright started piecing together a script by drawing from preexisting and newly generated text. This year, the jumping off point was a monologue by Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornes, spoken by a maid who details all the domestic labor she does for a family. The cast (Jenny Clyde, Jacob Ide, Bailey James, Kerry Kavanaugh, and Everett LeViness) assisted in the piece’s creation by contributing writing they’d made or found: Instructions on how to tie your shoes, Honda’s motorcycle safety rules from 1962, an original poem about the life of a stuffed animal.
“These pieces don’t make any sense individually or even how they’re bumping into one another, but maybe when you’re driving home you think, ‘Oh, I get it,’” says Wright.
That spark of understanding doesn’t come immediately to the cast or to Wright either. It arrives through practicing the piece and being open to discovery—a giddy magic I saw in the library meeting room during the rehearsal. As the cast swayed, swept, and spoke with scripts in hand, Wright or his child Jordan (also a Tulsa artist, serving as a consultant) would interrupt and suggest slight alterations: Sound more like a nagging school teacher. Cry more. Maybe this solo line becomes a group line. When the actor took the note, something as regimented as an ingredient list for chili became infused with a whimsy that gave it new meaning.
For Wright, that’s the fun of experimental theatre and the core of his work. To him, art is about the process, about embracing any evolution that emerges through learning from other great artists and playing in the rehearsal room. That does mean people are taking a chance on something a little weird by going to one of his shows, he admits, but he encourages people to get into the spirit of discovery and give it a try. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he says. “I’m not terribly ambitious. I just like to play.”
“Enchiridion of the Quotidian” plays for two weekends, May 22-23 and 29-30, at the Tulsa Artist Coalition Gallery. Shows start at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
