Performance arts advocates in Tulsa agree that Maybelle Wallace’s consistency and perseverance have kept Theatre North running for the last 44 years.
Now, the 96-year-old Wallace is being formally recognized for her impact on Tulsa’s first Black theater company.
In March, the Tulsa Women’s Commission will give Wallace the Anna C. Roth Legacy Award while Perry Broadcasting’s Women of Color Expo will present her with its annual lifetime achievement award.
Founded in 1977, Theatre North created a place to cultivate the performing arts, drama and music among north Tulsa residents. Its mission is to encourage and promote appreciation of the arts that reflect the African American experience.
The company made it possible for Tulsa’s Black performers to take on key paid roles in local theater.
“In the 1970s, Black actors were only offered roles that were subservient,” Wallace said. “So they started their own theater.”
It is one of a few community theaters that still put on shows at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, which also opened in 1977.
“Maybelle is the glue that keeps the African American theater experience together in Tulsa, and unapologetically,” said Lester “Doc” Shaw, a local singer who worked with some of the greats, like Marvin Gaye, and founded a Tulsa nonprofit for youth interested in the performing arts. “She is legendary — an icon.”
Theatre North has held hundreds of rehearsals at Rudisill Regional Library, also the home of the city’s African American Resource Center. In a spare classroom, a far cry from the expanse of the theater stage, Wallace’s slim, statuesque frame and commanding presence revealed why friends use regal monikers to describe her — queen, maven, icon.
Wallace started as an aspiring actress, even going to California to audition for film and television during a time when Hollywood films starring Black actors were rare.
“In the category I would be used for, they hired people they’d already worked with,” Wallace said.
She returned to Tulsa and became involved in Theatre North in 1977, when she took her daughter Sonya to rehearsals. Wallace only performed in two plays, one as a grandmother and another as a washer woman, and by 1981, she said it was evident her talents and skills fit management more than acting or directing.
After gradually shifting to the role of business manager, she did everything from securing funding and hiring staff to writing proposals and finding venues.
The following year, she became the executive director — a post she still holds today.
“So I do what I feel like I’m able to do, and that’s the administration. When people wanted to communicate with someone in the theater, they wanted a CEO,” she said.
Wallace went back to acting in 1983 when she played the late pass clerk in “Rumble Fish,” a Francis Ford Coppola film shot almost entirely on location in Tulsa. It featured a few rising stars, including Matt Dillon, Diane Lane and Nicolas Cage.
“I had a speaking role. It was really a wonderful experience, and I still get residuals from it. I got a residual, I think a month ago, for $1.60,” Wallace said.
She’s already been the recipient of numerous awards, including recognition from Tulsa’s Human Rights Commission last year and a lifetime achievement TATE award in 2014 from the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. It recognized excellence in local theater from 2009 to 2022.
“Working with Maybelle is always demanding, but she is a sweetheart, one of the nicer people I’ve ever met and at the same time laser-focused on her goals and the way to achieve them,” said Frank Gallagher, a director who’s worked with her for 12 years.
Being honored at this stage of her career and life “means that I’m getting my flowers while I’m alive,” Wallace said. That’s something she’s grateful for.
