Punk Rock Pajama Party
Campbell Hotel Event Center
October 1, 2026
Outside of being obsessed with The Muppet Show and the subsequent movies as a kid and young adult, puppets didn’t factor into my grown-up life at all until I found myself (long story) at the 2023 New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival, an international extravaganza that brought the best of the best, and in some cases the best of the worst.
Just like at most punk/DIY shows, you go to something like that hoping that you’ll see something good enough to validate the years you’ve dedicated to showing up to cramped basements, shitty bars, filthy living rooms, unheated/un-air-conditioned warehouses, park shelters, and mosquito-filled backyards. Most of the time what you get is okay, not even terrible enough to be exceptional. But when you find something inspiring, it makes all the mediocrity and disappointment disappear and restores your faith in the power of underground art.
Puppet folk are different. They’re like theatre kids, only dirtier and hornier. I’ve wanted to bring some of that weird-ass puppet people energy to Tulsa, because quite frankly, we need more people who don’t give any fucks. Tulsa has the habit of taking itself too seriously. So earlier this year, when I saw that the indie musician Quintron and the puppeteer Miss Pussycat—who’ve been performing for more than 30 years—were booking a tour together, I decided to reach out to them and ask if Tulsa could be a possible tour stop.
We made contact, tentative plans were made for their first-ever stop here, pay rates and venue options were discussed, and then I became completely consumed by my non-profit program, Girls Rock Camp Tulsa, and sort of forgot about it. Lucky for us, Rita D’LaVane of Ghoul Friends Cabaret picked up the task, and the Punk Rock Pajama Party was a go, complete with opening act Kater-Tot, a Kansas City-based burlesque performer with a filthy and intentionally non-sexy Mary Poppins act that recently had an audience at Theatre Tulsa Studios not knowing what to do with themselves.
On the night of the show, I dressed up in my finest “Eve Babitz lounging kimono and silky pajamas” drag and met up with my friends at the door of the Campbell Hotel Event Center. The amount of sensory overload around us indicated that we were in the presence of organized chaos. Balloons in primary colors floated above the chairs they were tied to. Local vendors sold giant ant earrings, candles and soaps, and other homemade crafts. We found ourselves some seats, on each of which was a colorful gift bag containing hand-puppet-making supplies, a teensy multi-color pen, and a pink bubble wand.