“More Sky: The Story of Lynn Riggs” featured in Tulsa Fringe Festival
The Tulsa Fringe Festival will feature a special performance of “More Sky: The Story of Lynn Riggs” on Sunday, July 26, at 4:30 p.m., at the Lynn Riggs Theater, located in the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center (621 E. 4th Street) in Tulsa.
In this one-person show, Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) is portrayed by Russ Tallchief (Osage), who tells the story of the gay Cherokee poet and playwright whose folk-play “Green Grow the Lilacs” (1931) was adapted into the award-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “OKLAHOMA!” (1943), the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Through letters written by and to Riggs, journals, and manuscripts, both his professional and personal life are revealed to the audience. The play, written by Gregory Hinton, was first produced in 2020 by Echo Theatre Company at the Lynn Riggs Theater.
Gregory Hinton, the playwright, is an author and lecturer who produced OUT WEST, a national museum education series dedicated to highlighting LGBTQ history and culture in the American West, sponsored by Echo Theatre Company, Oklahomans for Equality, Twisted Arts, and the Tulsa Fringe Festival. Click here for tickets: www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/more-sky-the-story-of-lynn-riggs.
Russ Tallchief is an Osage actor, director, writer, and dancer with a creative emphasis on Indigenous theatre. Tallchief has acted in numerous plays and was a featured dancer in the touring exhibition “Dance! American Art, 1830 – 1960,” curated by the Detroit Institute of Arts. He also danced the Charleston as an extra in Martin Scorsese’s film “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Tallchief is a member of Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre, founded by Welana Queton, along with Candice Byrd-Boney, which tells Wahzhazhe (Osage) stories with larger-than-life puppets.
Tallchief’s original play “The Chainsaw Artist” premiered in 2017 at Earth Rebirth, a nonprofit in Norman, OK.
Tallchief’s published play “Jacobson and the Kiowa Five,” previously titled “Jacobson House 1930,” evolved out of improvised performance art pieces Tallchief directed at the Jacobson House Native Art Center. His professional experience includes serving as Deputy Director of the Osage Nation’s Communications Department, previously serving as Art Galleries Editor for Native Peoples Magazine, working for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the First Americans Museum, and teaching at various colleges and universities.
The Gayly online. 7/8/26 @ 12:14 p.m. CST.