‘Time Changes Everything’ Premieres Tonight!

‘Time Changes Everything’ Premieres Tonight!

Time Changes Everything will make its world premiere tonight (7:30pm) at Liddy Doenges Theatre, 110 E 2nd St., in Tulsa.

The two-act play, written by former Tulsa World entertainment writers Thomas Conner and John Wooley and directed by Vern Stefanic, imagines a world where the two most famous Oklahoma music figures of the 1930s and 1940s (Bob Wills and Woody Guthrie) had met - although they never did.

The play shows Wills and Guthrie on their way up, and again after their respective careers have peaked. Time Changes Everything brings to life the attitudes they held, especially when it comes to what their music could do.

Brad Piccolo and John Cooper (of the Red Dirt Rangers) portray the two musicians, and then join their band for a mini-concert pf Wills and Guthrie songs in the second part of the evening.

Purchase tickets by phone at 800.364.7111, online at myticketoffice.com or at the Tulsa PAC Box Office. Regular seating tickets are $20 and up front tickets are $30.

Here's a synopsis of the two-act play by writer John Wooley.

I’m guessing that Thomas Hardy, the 19th Century British literary figure, never met Thomas Duncan, the famed vocalist with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, despite the fact that they both had something to say about how, you know, things become different as time wears on. I never met either of those Thomases, but I know a third one — my good pal Thomas Conner. And he and I appropriated the “Time Changes Everything” title (we were thinking, frankly, of the Duncan-penned song rather than the Hardy maxim) for our one-act imagining of two meetings between the Oklahoma music icons Woody Guthrie and Mr. Wills, which I’m proud to say will be presented as a part of Tulsa’s SummerStage festival this year.

TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING, the play, is set for June 25th in the Liddy Doenges Theatre at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. Thomas and I have been able to get John Cooper and Brad Piccolo of the Red Dirt Rangers to portray, respectively, Bob Wills and Woody Guthrie, and the entire batch of Rangers to come out in the second half of the show and play a selection of Wills and Guthrie tunes.

The SummerStage production will mark the play’s debut, although we did have a table reading with Cooper and Piccolo at the Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah last August, which drew a standing ovation and the teary-eyed approval of Woody’s sister Mary Jo (he says humbly, digging his toe into the carpet).

The premise is simple: Guthrie and Wills meet twice, their two encounters separated by some 15 years, and talk about themselves, their music and their lives. As far as Thomas and I have been able to ascertain, and we’ve done some research that included talking to close relatives of both men, they never actually met. But Thomas, a Guthrie scholar who got a grant to study the man at Columbia University, and I - a Wills fan from ‘way back - have long been intrigued by the differences in the two musical giants and their contrasting approaches to their profession.

Now, the Performing Arts Center Trust has given us the chance to share, and we’re grateful. We’re also grateful to Tulsa’s top stage director, Vern Stefanic, whom we can’t afford but who has agreed to direct the play anyway. A longtime friend and occasional collaborator of mine, Vern agreed to direct Time Changes Everything in return for my not telling anyone about his excised appearance in Weird Al Yankovic’s Tulsa-shot film UHF (1989). Hey, consider it done, pal.

So, please mark your calendars for June 25 and join us for the intergalactic premiere of Time Changes Everything.