A man and his horse walk into a bar.
That’s not a setup for a joke. It really happened. And it’ll happen again. The man is Chaz Stephens: comedian, rapper, son of a local Black rodeo legend. The horse’s name is Cowboy, and Stephens—aka ThunderWof—takes him to gigs wherever he can. More on that later.
ThunderWof has been boots-on-the-ground when it comes to building the Tulsa comedy scene. Last spring, he filmed a comedy special called “The Horse and The Wof” at the Spotlight Theater, becoming the first Black artist ever to produce a sold-out show at the historic venue. This week brings another first: Circle Cinema, which has never screened a local comedy special before, will show “The Horse and The Wof” on June 12, followed by a Q&A with Stephens, director Ian Upton, and comedian Evan Hughes. A portion of the ticket sales will go to support the Union Speech and Debate Team that nurtured Stephens’ own talent.
I sat down with ThunderWof at his family's DNR Ranch to talk about the special, the horse, meeting Ethan Hawke, and making comedy history in Tulsa.
Ryan Anderson: Why do they call you ThunderWof?
ThunderWof: My junior year of high school, my friends and I used to rap together, and my nickname back then was Charlie The Kid, but that was such a basic rap name. I was like, “I can come up with something better.” My uncle's rodeo nickname used to be Apache Kid because they lived on Apache Street in north Tulsa, so I was like OK, I'll go by Apache The Kid. And then I was listening to Young Thug, the Black Portland mixtape, and in the song “Movin” he goes, "Thugger, Thugger"—I thought he said, "Thunder, Thunder." I was like, “that's tough,” so I went by Apache Thunder, and I was like, you gotta have something cooler to it, so then I made it Apache Thunder Wolf. Then it dropped from Apache Thunder Wolf to just Thunder Wolf, and then [my friends and I] took the “l” out of Thunder Wolf, so still pronounced Thunder Wolf, but we just didn't want to keep an extra “l” in the name for no reason.
Ryan Anderson: You wear a lot of hats, including a cowboy hat. Can you tell me about the culture of being a cowboy in Tulsa?
ThunderWof: Yeah, I like to say more that I just live on a ranch. I wouldn't say I'm a real real cowboy—I yee-haw the best I can, but I want to make sure I give respect to the real cowboys out there doing real cowboy stunts and all that shit. I just ride and all that good shit. But yeah, I love cowboy culture. It's what I grew up in: my dad and uncle are professional cowboys, we have this horse ranch out here in north Tulsa, in Turley. We've had plenty of horses, cows, celebrities, people, families come out here. We've shot music videos. Some documentaries have been shot out here. So it's just fun to be a part of this culture. I’m happy to be a part of this upbringing.
Ryan Anderson: Are there any similarities between being a cowboy and what you do on stage?
ThunderWof: Oh yeah, for sure. The cowboy world is all about staying calm, respecting nature, things like that. And when it comes to performances as far as comedy and rap, it's all about feeling good within the crowd, kind of like having a chill response to things, making sure you stay calm, cool, collected, and do the best you can. One thing my dad always teaches me is, "The worst thing that can happen is that you fall off the horse, and the best thing is, the ground will always catch you." So if you keep that mentality that the ground will always catch you, it makes performing on stage a lot easier. Every comedian is going to have a show where they bomb, so even if I bomb it's all good. If I rap and the show doesn't go [how] I … wanted [it] to go, it's still all good. So I can't complain too much.
Ryan Anderson: Why did you choose to bring your horse out to different venues?
ThunderWof: The first time I ever did it, was back in 2022. It's a cowboy that keeps his horse at our house named Xavier Collins, a real good friend of mine. He and I had made a deal: he was like, "I bet you can't go viral!" And I was like, "I might be able to." So I borrowed his son's pony at the time, named Cowboy, and tried to see how many different venues I could take him into. We got him into TU, we got him into four of the five McNellie's restaurants, we got him into an art museum. We got to take him to a good amount of places for a pony. So that just kind of translated to: We have a horse. We have a trailer. Why not take our horse more places if we can? You know. In a more ethical way. We're not running up and down the street in the middle of the night or anything crazy like that, but if I can take him somewhere and I know it's a safe crowd, then yeah, I'll definitely take him.
Ryan Anderson: You recently shared a photo of you with Ethan Hawke. What was it like meeting him?
ThunderWof: I think he's a really cool guy. The first time I met him, he came to a comedy show; him and a friend of his snuck in the back. I was hosting the show, and I was like, “Oh shit, is that Ethan Hawke?" At first I was kind of blown away…. And then after the show he stayed around for a little bit, he was finishing his drink and I asked him for a picture, and we got to chit-chat. He was really impressed by all the Tulsa comics that he got to see that night. The second time I got to meet him, I was a stand-in on The Lowdown, which is the new name for The Sensitive Kind, I got to be Keith David's stand-in for that, and that was super fun. So I got to meet Ethan again, and I was like, “I don't know if you remember me or not, but I did comedy, you came to a show." And he looked at me and he was like, "Yeah, I remember you." We got to have a little bit of a chit-chat but then they called action, so he had to get back into his role. Really nice guy. Really sweet guy. And I really appreciate how much he's taken to Tulsa.
Ryan Anderson: Is acting something you want to do within ThunderWof's career?
ThunderWof: I'm all about chasing a bag, so if acting gives me a bag, I will act. I did do speech and debate in high school and in college, and you have to do a little bit of acting in those events, so yeah, I'm all about a bag if possible.
Ryan Anderson: What inspired you to write the special?
ThunderWof: It was really my friend Evan Hughes. He had talked to my friend Ian Upton [about wanting] to start creating more opportunities for comedians in Tulsa, and one of those things is helping us get our own professionally done specials, to create a Tulsa culture of comedy specials here. So Evan had approached Ian about wanting to [direct] a special and asked him, "Who's a comedian you'd think you could work best with?" And Ian was like, "ThunderWof." I wasn't there for this conversation, so then Evan approached me and said, "How do you feel about filming a special?" And I was like, "OK, yeah sure."
So for those that don't know, the way I do comedy is, I have a list of about hundred-something jokes and I let someone in the audience choose the joke, and the next joke, and the next joke, until time has relapsed or I'm just tired of telling jokes. So [for the special] I gave the list to another person in the audience and let her choose. I think we did 18 jokes—the special’s rather short, it's only 25 minutes. It’s my first special so we wanted to keep it concise. We also wanted to make it more artistic compared to other specials I've seen, where it's just very simple jump cuts to close-ups of audience members. So we shot it in a way that, hopefully when [people] see it, they can tell we tried to put a different little spin on how to film a comedy special.
Ryan Anderson: How do you know if a joke is funny or not?
ThunderWof: The way I look at it—and it's probably not the best way to look at it—is, if I wrote it, I find it funny. If someone comes up to me and remembers that joke, that's one way. The other way I also look at it is more like, Is the audience engaged? Not in just the joke but in the show itself. Sometimes I think a performance can be funny even if the jokes aren't the funniest. [It’s] little things that happened in the show, stuff like that.
Ryan Anderson: Did I hear you alluding to there possibly being another comedy special coming up?
ThunderWof: Oh yeah, for sure. There's already a conversation with a friend of mine about tryna look at something towards November. I turn 30 this year, and I think it would be fun to film my second special for my 30th birthday. It happens to fall on a Friday, so it can't get better than that.
Ryan Anderson: You're making history as the first local comedian to have a comedy special screened in Circle Cinema. How does it feel to create this historic moment?
ThunderWof: Honestly, it's almost surreal, like you wake up and kind of pinch yourself. When you put in a vision for what you want your art to do or to become and then it comes into that—ahh man, the news of it being in the Circle feels like God called you and the angels were just sending good news.
When Ian and I first met, I told him, "I think it's easy to film a special, I think it's easy to get jokes, someone talks, someone records, camera angles. I think that's the easy part, to me. I think the hard part is: How do you make a project land?” And I think this is the best landing for [a] first project, for my accountability as a comedian in Tulsa. I think this is not just a project for me, but for Tulsa and Oklahoma comedians as a whole. Being the first just means that it's a door open for someone else to come along. We've had some other specials filmed that have been really incredible to see, so this might be a way to open the door for the Circle to have the second, the third, and the fourth comedian after me to come film and screen their specials, and give everyone that Tulsa love.
Ryan Anderson: The special was originally shot in the Spotlight Theater, another historic venue. What was the importance of shooting it there?
ThunderWof: It was the first comedy special shot inside of the Spotlight Theater in their 100 and something years. I think 105. I'm tryna remember, I'm bad at dates sometimes. The Spotlight Theater and its director Lauren Maffey have been awesome about trying to get more opportunities for artists to come do stuff there. So when Evan approached me about it, he said, "We'll shoot it at the Spotlight," and I was like, "OK, yeah, that's perfect." I've done a show there before and I really appreciate [it]. It's a small, cute little theater, has a lot of history in it. When I got to shoot there it was … almost like being in a play. The theater has different curtains, so I had a real curtain theater technician come and pull curtains for me, do sound. [Being on that stage] was almost like being in a little theater within itself for my own special.
Working with the Spotlight was so awesome because they were so flexible about things. Like, we got to do a food collab with Prism Cafe. They were the ones who made sandwiches. So we got to have a different tier ticket system for dinner, for drinks, and then just general admission. That was super awesome to be able to do. That was the fun part. We sold out the first 70 tickets in 10 days. Originally it was going to be a 70-ticket show, so we were like, OK, we sold out the first 70 tickets in 10 days, I guess we can make it 100. Then in the next two days, we sold out those last 30 tickets.
Ryan Anderson: It definitely seems like you're able to curate and create experiences that are different from the norm. How will the screening at Circle Cinema be different from a regular moviegoing experience?
ThunderWof: I think the first thing is the way that it's shot. I'll give away a little bit of a spoiler, but the way that we shot it was that we put cameras kind of behind the audience, so you feel more like you're in the theater itself. We shot it with a pan shot, so it's like you see everything, but you're in it. If you ever had a bootleg movie as a kid, [where] someone in the movie theater just had a camera and recorded the screen, and there's people walking across the front—that's the best way I can describe it, but less chaotic than that. No kids screaming or nothing like that.
Ryan Anderson: What do you want people to take away from the special?
ThunderWof: “Wow that shit was funny!” That's it! [He bursts into laughter.] I want people to walk out—and I hope I hear these things—and be like, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that before, it was supercool, I really enjoyed it." I'm hoping I get positive [responses]. If I do get a negative response, which I'm actually OK with too, I hope it's somebody that says something like, "Ahh, you're not as funny as Dave Chappelle." Like, that's not an insult. It's a good compliment, I suppose. So I'm OK with honesty and any feedback I get. I think sometimes I get too comfortable with positive feedback, but I want the negative feedback at times.
"The Horse and The Wof": A ThunderWof Comedy Special
June 12, 2025
Circle Cinema, 10 S. Lewis Ave.
