Crista Patrick spent 15 years as a professor and costume closet manager for the University of Tulsa. In that time, she amassed an amazing collection of over 50,000 costume pieces that have given life to the stage. When the theatre program ended in 2022, Patrick chose to gift her entire collection to the TPAC in hopes that her work would live on. Thanks to help from the City of Tulsa, her collection has a new home and is doing just that.

The TPAC’s resident community partners — including Theatre Tulsa, American Theatre Company, World Stage Theatre Company, Theatre North and others — can now borrow costume pieces for free, paying only to clean and repair what they choose to use. Costuming can be a prohibitive cost to local theatre companies, and our hope is that this will make presenting local art just a little bit easier for the entire community.