00:00Oklahoma, where the wind goes, sleepin' down the plain.
00:03I'm singing the show tonight, actually.
00:05You are for the first time?
00:06Yeah, for the first time.
00:07Wow.
00:07I am Jelani Aladdin.
00:09I'm Elizabeth Stanley.
00:11Hey, I'm Lauren Patton.
00:12Hi, my name is Celia Gooding.
00:14Bill Boss, Senior Vice President at Skydance Television.
00:16I am Eva Price.
00:18I'm the producer of Oklahoma on Broadway.
00:20This revival of Oklahoma is...
00:22Authentic.
00:23Emotional.
00:24Radical.
00:25Live, close, and upfront.
00:27And unexpected.
00:29So this interpretation of the show is taking the look at the female characters with a feminist
00:37prism and says, I'm here, I'm gonna own my feelings, I'm gonna own my thoughts, and I'm
00:44gonna own who I am, and I'm gonna put it out there.
00:47And whoever doesn't like it, too bad for them.
00:49And having the center of the attention be on a black woman, I was like, this is something
00:53that is rare.
00:55And I cried, and I felt so comfortable and so safe.
00:59And it didn't dawn on me until a while after that it was because it was a woman who looked
01:03like me.
01:04Whatever we do in the arts reflects the world that we are living in today.
01:09And so for me, representation is the culmination of all those kinds of people reflected back
01:17to an audience and celebrated to an audience.
01:20I think I was really struck by not only how it was clear that it was important to the production
01:25for it to be representative of many different people, and not just cis, white, able-bodied
01:33people, straight people, but also just how it didn't feel a need to address the fact that
01:40it was being representative.
01:41Because it's honest, the show just speaks a very real truth and has a fantastic subtext.
01:47This is so important for women simply because of the fact that the script actually was not
01:52changed at all, but it's a completely different story putting a woman in a place of power instead
01:58of a place of being objectified.
02:01How are we supposed to live together safely, joyfully, collectively, if we don't feel like
02:07we all belong?
02:08If we don't see ourselves represented in the stories that we're paying money to see or that
02:13we're enjoying, then how do we actually understand what the world is all about?
