Good bones 

On a freezing January night in New York City, Jackson Gifford planned on staying home.

“My roommate’s grandmother had just passed away a night or two before, so she was feeling very somber,” Gifford said. “We were just having a cozy night in, and it was really cold out.”

But the chance to grab last-minute seats at Dead as a Dodo, an otherwise “completely sold-out and impossible to get a ticket to” production at this year’s Under the Radar theater festival was too tempting to pass up. Drama Desk nominated it for an Outstanding Puppetry award, and The New York Times called it “outlandishly inventive” and “as morbidly poetic as The Nightmare Before Christmas,” but going in, Gifford had only heard a couple of intriguingly incongruous details through word of mouth.

“They basically were like, ‘Oh my god! It’s so great! You are going to cry so much,’” Gifford said. “I was like, ‘Huh? I thought this was a puppet show.’”

Both things turned out to be true.

“I’m very emotional, but I never really find myself crying at much theater,” Gifford said. “In this rare circumstance, my roommate, who obviously was coping with a loss, and me were just weeping with 150 others sitting around us. What’s so brilliant about this piece of theater is that it’s created for audiences ages 7-plus, but I sat in a venue with almost entirely adults, many of whom I would call a discerning audience and who were just weeping and enjoying this puppet show.” 

Gifford, who divides his time between NYC and OKC as the artistic director for Southern Plains Productions, emailed Dead as a Dodo creators Wakka Wakka Productions to tell them how much it moved him. Several emails and months later, OKC audiences will have the chance to see Dead as a Dodo at Oklahoma Contemporary, 11 NW 11th St., Oct. 23-25. Tickets are $45-$50.

Immersive journey

Drawing inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, Tales from the Crypt, 16th-century Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch and Disney’s Silly Symphony cartoons (think spooky, scary skeletons playing themselves like xylophones), Dead as a Dodo opens in a sparkling underworld where two skeletons, a boy and a dodo, search for replacements for their missing bones. 

“For the first half of the show, it’s almost entirely in black and white,” Gifford said. “It’s a lot of muted colors, and then as these two best friends, these skeletal figures, go on their journey, the world starts to open up into more colors. … It symbolizes the beginning of a new journey that ultimately completes a transformation of their physical being.”

Both the background scenery and the puppeteers are covered in black sequins.

“The sparkle of the sequins allows for the puppeteers to effectively ‘disappear’ into the scenography like magic — creating a shifting glittering surface that surrounds the puppets,” explains the production’s press material. “Each movement by the puppeteers allows the world to both expand and contract as if it were alive.”

Gifford said the effect will be particularly striking in Oklahoma Contemporary’s 250-seat Te Ata Theater.

“People are really going to be able to be up close with these very intricate puppets,” Gifford said. “The opportunity to be up close and really engage with these actors as they bring the story to life is something so captivating and so unique. These actors have embodied these characters so well, both with the physicality, with their voice. … There’s just something real about it.” 

Digital projections and thoughtful sound design add to the immersive experience, Gifford said, and the production’s technical inventiveness and creative ingenuity encourage audiences to become emotionally invested.

“It really comes down to storytelling and how they’ve been able to create such a specific and unique world with the puppets,” Gifford said. “It just leaves you very taken care of by your storyteller. So as soon as the show starts, you trust immediately, and you’re really able to go on the journey. And when it leads you to that place of heartbreak, you really go there with them.”

Recommended for audiences age 7 or older, the production also includes fog, loud noises, strobe lighting and, of course, discussions about death. 

“That’s a pretty heavy subject matter, especially for a show that is advertised to be for ages 7 plus,” Gifford said. “In a way, it exposes our most basic fear, and there’s something really interesting about that. Death is such a hard topic, a hard thing to digest, especially as a kid. And it really asks some hard-hitting questions that I think are important for people of all ages to discuss.”

Whether audience members are adults or children, Dead as a Dodo writers and directors Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage never underestimate their intelligence, Gifford said.

According to the production’s Director’s Notes: “As a species, our idea of what death is has changed over time, as humanity has evolved from early humans until the present day. And as individuals, from the time we are children until we become old, our idea of what death is also evolves.

“Present day humans have attained a god-like status, creating life ourselves (and not the old-fashioned way). In our lifetime, the birth and growth of AI, gene editing and bio-technology have all thrust into new realities and ideas of what is possible. … Dead as a Dodo engages with this new present and the future that will come of it.”

Gifford said working with Oslo, Norway-based Wakka Wakka to bring the production to Oklahoma aligns with Southern Plains’ mission to “create theater that enriches our local community while elevating global voices. 

“It’s so exciting to bring internationally acclaimed theater and different perspectives to our local community in a way that’s meaningful,” Gifford said.

In 2026, Southern Plains plans to bring two more productions to Oklahoma City: Brian Quijada’s hip-hop inspired Civil Rights Movement examination Where Did We Sit on the Bus? and Jason Robert Brown’s Drama Desk Award-winning musical The Last Five Years starring Erin Elizabeth Clemons.

Visit southernplainsproductions.org.

This article appears in Celebrate the season across OKC.