Oklahoma native writes for TV’s ‘Supergirl’

Part of G Fest Muskogee lineup unveiled

Kyle Dillingham celebrates French album

Esteemed Oklahoma musician Kyle Dillingham will celebrate the release of his new French-language album “Il Fait Beau” in concert with his band Horseshoe Road at 7 p.m. Friday at the CHK Central Boathouse, 732 Riversport Drive. Food trucks will begin selling tasty fare at 5:30 p.m. Out Friday, “Il Fait Beau” is the soundtrack to an original Broadway-style Frenchlanguage musical Dillingham developed as part of a language-learning program. The album boasts several duets between the love interests, so Dillingham’s wife, Andrea, will sing with him in French during Friday’s “Concert of Love” CD release show. The concert will feature three or four songs from “Il Fait Beau” mingled in with Horseshoe Road’s usual set, which includes tracks from the band’s fall 2016 release “Fear or Faith.”

Tickets to Friday’s show are $15 and available at www.brownpapertickets.com. For more information, go to www.horseshoeroad.net.

Organizers of the G Fest Muskogee music festival have revealed part of the highly anticipated lineup for the 2017 edition. The first round of 11 performers announced for the three-day festival includes Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Blackberry Smoke, J.J. Grey and MoFro, The Mavericks, Ben and Noel Haggard and the Strangers, The Swon Brothers, Kentucky Headhunters, Milton Patton, Becky Hobbs, John Fullbright and “Leon: The Tribute,” a Leon Russell tribute show.

Building on the success of its inaugural year in 2016, G Fest Muskogee returns June 15-17 for three nights of music, camping and entertainment. Headliners will be released closer to the event, according to a news release. Tickets range from $79 to $279. For tickets and camping information, go to www.gfestmuskogee.com.

Tickets also are on sale for a March 4 Muskogee screening of “The Making of G Fest,” a documentary by Oscar Ray, of Bare Bones Filmworks, that follows the planning and production of last year’s inaugural G Fest music festival. Tickets are available at www.eventbrite.com or by calling the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame at (918) 687-0800.

Long returns to the Blue Door

British singer-songwriter and poet Bobby Long, who is based in New York, will return to Oklahoma City for a March 4 show at the Blue Door, 2805 N McKinley. His latest album, 2015’s “Ode to Thinking,” from Compass Records, earned strong notices, and he recently published his second volume of poetry, “Losing My Misery.”

For OKC tickets and information, go to www. bluedoorokc.com.

A Tulsa native and University of Oklahoma graduate is helping bring life to a classic villain on The CW TV series “Supergirl.” Sterling Gates, who now lives in Los Angeles, wrote the episode “Mr. and Mrs.Mxyzptlk” with Jessica Queller.

“Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg reached out and asked me to help the show tackle one of Superman’s iconic villains, Mr. Mxyzptlk,” Gates said in an interview with “I co-wrote the episode with one of the show’s coexecutive producers, an incredibly talented actor/ writer/producer named Jessica Queller. Everyone on staff —including the cast and crew —was incredibly welcoming and supportive.”

In the episode, set to air Monday night, Mr. Mxyzptlk (Peter Gadiot) is a magical imp who shows up on Earth and declares his love for Kara, aka Supergirl (played by Melissa Benoist). When she tries to let him down easy, he takes it as a challenge, using his wild powers to impress her.

Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel, with artist Ira Yarborough, invented Mr. Mxyzptlk for 1944’s “Superman” #30, though due to the production lead time, the character first appeared in the daily newspaper comic strip.

“I’m a big believer in going back to source material whenever you’re adapting classic characters into other mediums,” Gates said. “I have a pretty extensive Superman collection, so I pulled all the Mxy appearances I could and did a deep dive into the fifth dimension. After that, I scanned through all the old cartoons and TVshows where Mxy’s appeared, including the completely charming and utterly bizarre Christmas episode of ‘Lois & Clark.’ “

This Mxyzptlk will be a new incarnation for this TV universe.

“When I got into the writers room and we started talking about Mxyzptlk, it became clear that the showrunners were interested in presenting Mxy as someone new to their universe,” Gates said. “That gave us a little wiggle room in our interpretation, but he’s definitely the fifthdimensional imp that Superman fans know and love.”

Gates previously wrote a well-regarded run on the “Supergirl” comic for DC Comics; he returned to the character in 2016 to write “Adventures of Supergirl,” which was based on the TV interpretation of the character. Now, he’s written for the TV show, as well. Gates went to Vancouver to be on set during the filming of “Mr. and Mrs. Mxyzptlk,” where he was impressed by the scale, and the detail, from The Department of Extra-Normal Operations to Kara’s apartment.

“All of those sets are astonishing,” Gates said. “You stand in the middle of the D.E.O. set, and it feels like you’re a multimillion-dollar government installation — even though you’re really in a warehouse just outside of Vancouver. I was on set for a week while shooting this episode, and every day I found some new and cool detail in every room.

“Did you know Kara has a working typewriter on her desk in her loft? Or that she has a framed drawing of a pairof shoes over her bed that she did for an art class in high school? Little details like that are impossible to see on camera, but they help inform the characters’ worlds.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mxyzptlk” is to air at 7 p.m. Monday on The CW Network.