Category Archives: Literature

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow unfolds at the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre

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aacctSleepyHollow_posterWashington Irving’s classic tale comes to life as the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre continues its 2015/2016 Main Stage season with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, October 23-November 8.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is an American Halloween classic. Gremlins, ghosts and galloping headless horsemen will haunt audiences Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., October 23 through November 8. It is recommended for third grade and up.

Ichabod Crane is the newly-hired schoolmaster of Sleepy Hollow, a superstitious little community in New York’s Hudson Valley, 1790. He persistently professes his disbelief in all things supernatural—until the night of Katrina Van Tassel’s Halloween Frolic, that is. Riding home that evening, Ichabod comes face to face—so to speak—with Sleepy Hollow’s most feared and famous ghost.

The cast includes:

  • Paige Carpenter of Lonsdale, as Hilde Winetraub;
  • Geoffrey Eggelston of Sioux Falls, S.D., as Ichabold Crane;
  • Mark Hansen of Little Rock as the Pastor and Van Ripper;
  • Lauren Linton of Memphis, as Katrina Van Tassel;
  • Aleigha Morton of Little Rock, as Widow Winetraub;
  • Nick Spencer of Nashville, Tenn, as Brom Van Brunt;
  • Rhett Booher of Little Rock as Cornwall;
  •  and Sarah Tennille of Little Rock, and Max Green of North Little Rock.

Adapted by Frederick Gaines from the story by Washington Irving, it is directed by John Isner. Bradley Anderson is the artistic director. Costumes are designed by Erin Larkin, technical direction by Drew Posey, lighting design by Mike Stacks, properties design by Miranda Young and Sarah Gasser is the stage manager.

 

Show times: Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Ticket prices: $12.50 General admission, $10 for Arkansas Arts Center members, $10 per person for groups of 10 or more (Children 2 years of age and under are free, however the child must remain in an adult’s lap at all times.)

Best enjoyed by third grade and up.

And then there were Two – Finalists for next CALS Director announced

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calsThe Transition/Selection Committee of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) has recommended the CALS Board of Trustees consider two candidates, Nate Coulter and Haley Lagasse, both of Little Rock, as the final candidates for the position of director.

The next director will succeed longtime director Dr. Bobby Roberts.

There will be a reception in mid-November open to anyone interested in meeting the finalists. An announcement of the new director will be made following the Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday, December 10, at noon at Hillcrest Hall, 1501 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Creative Class of 2015: Jay Jennings

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jennings_jayAuthor, raconteur, and music aficionado Jay Jennings contributes to Little Rock’s cultural life in a variety of ways as a participant and promoter. He may well know more about author Charles Portis, than the author himself.  When not traveling to discuss or create good literature, he is often found at various Little Rock music venues.

Jennings is a freelance writer whose journalism, book reviews and humor have appeared in many national magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, and Travel & Leisure. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review and the San Francisco Chronicle, and is a past chair of the Arkansas Literary Festival.

He began his writing career as a reporter at Sports Illustrated, where he covered college football and basketball, followed by four years as the features editor at Tennis magazine. While at the latter, he edited an anthology of short stories and poetry, Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game(Breakaway Books, 1999), which the New Yorker called “a delight—and perhaps a surprise—to those who know and care about literature.” His work has been recognized by The Best American Sports Writing annual and has appeared in the humor anthology Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor. He is a two-time MacDowell Colony fellow in fiction and was awarded a grant in 2008 from the Arkansas Arts Council for a novel-in-progress. Most recently, he edited a collection of Charles Portis’s work, Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, which was published in 2012 by Butler Center Books and in paperback in 2013 by Overlook Press.

Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City was his first book and was named a 2010 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

Creative Class of 2015: Katie Campbell

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Katie CampbellKatie Campbell is a director, performer, and teaching artist. She is originally from North Carolina but for six years has found an artistic home in Little Rock as a company member with the Arkansas Art Center Childrenʼs Theater (AACCT), director and performer with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, and improvisor with ImprovLittleRock and The Joint Venture.  She is also the co-founder and co-director of the youth improv comedy company, Armadillo Rodeo.

Campbell is a 2015 Jim Henson Family Grant recipient for her devised and directed shadow puppet play for young people, The Ugly Duckling.  That production recently played to sold out houses at the AACCT Studio Series enrapturing children and adults alike.

She has an MFA in directing Theatre for Young Audiences from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BA in Theatre Arts from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is also an alumna of the North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied acting with Tanya Belov, voice with Mary Irwin, circus arts with Dikki Ellis, and movement/mask work with Robert Francesconni and Mollie Murry.

Some of her favorite roles include Adriana in The Comedy of Errors with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre (2010); Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac and Barbara in Night of the Living Dead AACCT Studio Series (2008);  Mouse in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, If You Take a Mouse to School, and Merry Christmas Mouse! (AACCT Mainstage 2007-12).

Creative Class of 2015: Eliza Borné

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Eliza BorneEliza Borné was named Interim Editor of Oxford American magazine earlier this year.  She had been the Managing Editor of the magazine.  Currently, she is at work on the annual OA music issue, which this year will feature Georgia.

A Little Rock native and graduate of Central High School, she wrote Children’s Theatre reviews for the Arkansas Times while in high school.  While a student at Wellesley College, she interned for OA.  After graduation, she was an associate editor at BookPage.  In February 2013, she joined the OA as an editor.  When he was in Little Rock earlier this year, author Harrison Scott Key praised Borné’s skills as an editor.  At that appearance, he also lauded her skills as an interviewer. She has also used these skills serving as a moderator for the Arkansas Literary Festival.

 

While her talents as a writer and editor have been honed through hard work, she is also carrying on a family tradition in promoting Little Rock’s cultural life. A great-grandmother, Adolphine Fletcher Terry, was a member of the Little Rock Public Library Board (a forerunner of CALS) for decades.  Much could be written about what various ancestors have done to help Little Rock, but Borné is not one to rely on the family name as she forges her own career.  Instead, she uses her skills and love of Little Rock to promote good writing, good music and good living.

2016 season for Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre announced

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AST 2016Last week, the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre announced the four titles for the 2016 season, their 10th season of bringing the Bard and more to Central Arkansas.

Actual performance dates and casting will be announced later.

The 2016 outdoor Shakespeare: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Directed by Robert Quinlan
A comic romp of epic proportions, this magical comedy and its lovers, fairies, and oh-so-Rude Mechanicals are the perfect company for an Arkansas midsummer night.

The 2016 tragedy: ROMEO AND JULIET
Directed by AST Producing Artistic Director Rebekah Scallet
Romance, intrigue, and adventure abound in Shakespeare’s timeless tale of the original
star-crossed lovers caught between their
warring families.

The 2016 musical: WEST SIDE STORY
Book by Arthur Laurents, Music by Leonard Bernstein , Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed and Choreographed by Jeremy Williams
This beloved musical transplants the story of Romeo and Juliet to 1950s New York City, where the warring Jets and Sharks stand in the way of true love.

The 2016 Family Shakespeare: TWELFTH NIGHT
This one-hour Family Shakespeare adaptation takes us to the island of Illyria, where shipwrecked Viola must disguise herself as a boy—causing complications in her love life.

Two authors feted at tonight’s CALS “A Prized Evening”

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prized_eveningTwo Arkansas authors, Guy Lancaster and Davis McCombs, will be honored at A Prized Evening, the annual awarding of the Worthen and Porter Literary Prizes, on Thursday, October 1, at 6 p.m. in the Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street. A book signing and reception will follow the presentation, which is free and open to the public.

Reservations are appreciated, but not required. RSVP to kchagnon@cals.org or 501-918-3033.

The Booker Worthen Literary Prize will be awarded to Guy Lancaster, editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, for his book Racial Cleansing in Arkansas, 1883-1924: Politics, Land, Labor, and Criminality. Lancaster, a native of Jonesboro, holds a Ph.D. in Heritage Studies from Arkansas State University and currently serves as the creative materials editor of the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. He edited Arkansas in Ink: Ghosts, Gunslingers, and Other Graphic Tales (illustrated by Ron Wolfe) and, with Mike Polston, co-edited To Can the Kaiser: Arkansas and the Great War, both published by Butler Center Books.

Davis McCombs, director of Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, will receive the Porter Fund Literary Prize in recognition of his substantial and impressive body of work. McCombs has published two volumes of poetry, which have won numerous awards, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and many other publications.

The Worthen Prize was established by the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) in 1999 in memory of William Booker Worthen, a longtime supporter of the public library and a twenty-two-year member of CALS Board of Trustees. It is presented annually for the best work by an author or editor living in the CALS service area. The Porter Fund was established in 1985 by Jack Butler and Phillip McMath in honor of Dr. Ben Drew Kimpel, who requested the prize be named for his mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter.