Equality Gala

The 2017 Dennis R Neill Collegiate Leadership Award Winner, Morgan Allen is appearing in Fun Home.

American Theatre Company is honored to present the Oklahoma premiere of 2015’s Tony winner for Best Musical, Fun Home with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron (Tony winner for Best Book of a Musical) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Tony winner for Best Score,) based on the award-winning graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.
When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality, and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires. Fun Home is a refreshingly honest, wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

The show opens Saturday, October 21 in the John H. Williams Theatre of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center with performances through Saturday, October 28. Tickets available at myticketoffice.com, or by calling 918-596-7111
Use code: funhome1 for an OKEQ discount.

As the only “nonbinary q***r Hmong person” they know of in the Tulsa area, Pickles Lee would perhaps have a hard time finding a support group made up of people precisely like them.
And it is exactly that fact that motivates Pickles to work toward adding more colors to the virtual rainbow of inclusion.
Pickles, an Owasso High School senior who is president of the school’s Equality Club, is Oklahomans for Equality’s 2017 recipient of the Carolyn Wagner Youth Leadership Award.
Gay-straight alliances such as Owasso’s Equality Club hold a special place in Pickles’ heart because they are an introduction to activism.
“My identity seems to be a political statement without me trying, and it seems like this is the case for many other youths in the LGBT+ community,” Pickles says. “I never want any youth to ever feel marginalized or alone, and I strive to make the world a more accepting place.”
Both within the LGBTQ community and in the larger community, Pickles says, “there needs to be more inclusion of other marginalized folks, because one can be a person of color or a different faith and still part of the LGBT+ community. Being someone whose identities belong to many marginalized communities, it’s hard to find a place that can be inclusive of all identities. We’re all fighting for one thing, so why not fight together?”
Pickles found themselves at the forefront of just such a fight recently, when a group of 70 LGBTQ students from the Tulsa area were meeting with lawmakers at the Oklahoma Capitol. During the visit, a Capitol employee emailed other staffers to warn about the “cross-dressers in the building.” Pickles, a co-founder and president of TYSNG (the Transgender Youth Support and Networking Group) and a member of the Trans National Youth Council, was designated to speak on behalf of OkEq in responding to the offensive email.
Pickles is “elated” to receive the Youth Leadership Award but insists that “this isn’t the end of my activism work,” adding, “I am a loud and outspoken transgender and q***r Hmong youth, and I will continue to live my life loud and outspoken by speaking out against injustices.”
A planned double college major of law and women and gender studies should help them accomplish that.

– By Sharon Bishop-Baldwin