The+Life+and+Times+of+Tulsa+Lovechild

__The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild: A Road Trip __ by Greg Owens is quite an interesting and unusual play. I’ve never seen anything like it, but then I haven’t seen many plays. The setting depicted the play very well. When I came in to the theater, I tried to observe everything on stage and noticed that it was very surrealistic. The floor and walls was painted blue with white clouds, and there was a sign on the side that was written upside down. There was an extremely big telephone in a booth in the center of back of the stage. The exaggeration and unreal qualities of the setting and prop seemed to portray a sort of dreamland, which, in fact, is a major part of Tulsa’s character. Tulsa’s mother Sylvia had recently passed away, but Tulsa still talked to her as if her mother was still alive in her head. Her and her mother communicated with each other until it was time for Tulsa to scatter Sylvia’s ashes at the motel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Also, the theater’s intimate setting let the audience have a closer connection with the actors on stage.  The actors all played different, distinct characters which they did a good job on, and also their costumes represented their characters clearly as well. Before the play started, two people dressed in a costume painted light blue with white clouds came on to the stage in a sort of creepily way by crawling slyly onto the middle of the floor. They continued to crawl to random positions on the floor and completely camouflaged with the sky-painted surroundings. I was in the first row, so it was kind of uneasy having them crawl so close to you. I felt like one of them was staring at me, but this was when they were doing their still positions where the person’s still gaze probably happened to be where I was sitting. Their purpose was to move props in and out and around the stage silently during the play while the audience is focusing on the main characters of the play. I found it sort of unnecessary and random, however, for them to crawl on stage and having different still positions, before the play started.  Tulsa had a very cynical character that I did not like. In the beginning of the play, she was answering questions of an invisible interviewer. Her remarks became rude and sarcastic, and later she ended up yelling at the interviewer. Tulsa’s costume supported her insecure personality. She wore layers of clothing and covered most of her body throughout the play. This conservative dressing showed that she was not very outward with her feelings. It was hard for Tulsa to show Ed, a guy that she fell in love with, her strong feelings for him. She kept telling herself that Ed was just another conceited guy from Hollywood. Her pessimism just caused more obstacles in her journey that was avoidable.  Sylvia, Tulsa’s mother, had clothes that definitely showed she was a hippie. Throughout the whole play, from when she was pregnant to when she was old, her clothes always had some sort of hippie touch to it. I originally thought she was supposed to be a Native American because she wore headbands in her hair and the material of her clothes looked like it was made of animal skin. But that’s how hippies kind of looked, wearing headbands and vests that were fringed at the end and having vibrant prints on their clothing. So that type of clothing showed that she was from the hippie era for sure.  I feel though there were just many random characters in the play, like Clyde and Kelly Jo. Clyde was a country boy who would literally sniff around for the smell of Kelly Jo, and Kelly Jo was Miss Nebraska who wanted to win the pageant and become famous. Yet they dated each other even though their personalities clashed. How that happened, the play did not explain. In the middle of the play I had to think about what these two characters had anything to do with Tulsa and her journey to Oklahoma. I had the same problem with Rose and Valerie, the conjoined twins who escaped from an evil group they used to stay with. I had no idea how they were connected to Tulsa. Towards the end however, Bob and the hotel he ran (the one Tulsa was born in) connected everything together. The hotel symbolized the times of happiness and sadness in people’s lives because somehow most of the people were linked to it in some way or another. Bob was linked to Rose because they had a thing for each other which was also unexpected and out of the blue. Also, Bob was there with Sylvia and Woody when they had Tulsa at the motel. The beauty queen met Bob and Rose and Valerie rode with Clyde at some point in their journey. Random connections like these existed in the play, but I would rather just do without the extra characters of the twins, Miss Nebraska, and Clyde. I would just be focused on Tulsa, her family, and Bob.  The costumes of Bob, Miss Nebraska, Clyde, and the Siamese twins were awesome though. Bob was definitely all about freedom and America, so he wore red, white, and blue clothes on. Miss Nebraska had a look-at-me type of thing to her, so she wore a vivid, big pageant dress with tiara, white gloves, and jewelry. Clyde was an outdoors type of person and almost dog-like (since he sniffed and howled), so he carried a rifle and wore a winter bomber hat. He clothes even looked like he has worn them in the outdoors. Rose, the more daring one and outgoing, wore a black leather jacket with skinny jeans and boots, and Valerie wore a long motherly dress that looked like women used to wear back in the old days where they covered practically their whole body but the face. Valerie’s clothes represented her inwardness and shyness.  Therefore, I think the costumes were absolutely great and exhibited each character’s personality very well. The play kept me attentive through the whole time, and the actors projected their voices loud and clear where no one can misunderstand what they were saying. But I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who does not like to watch plays with unrealistic and exaggerated traits. I did like it, even though I had a little trouble connecting situations at first.