Category Archives: Theatre

LANTERNS! this weekend at Wildwood

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LANTERNS! Festival, Arkansas’ only deep-winter outdoor festival, will light up the night at Wildwood Park for a fifth year of family fun and illuminating entertainment! Travel paved paths illuminated with fire pits and thousands of luminaria to enjoy unique entertainment, authentic food and beverages for all ages at eight cultural vistas from around the globe!

LANTERNS! runs from 6pm to 10pm on Friday, February 22 and Saturday, February 23.  On Sunday, February 24 it runs from 6pm to 9pm.

Tickets are available at the gate during festival days:
$10 for Adults
$5 for Children (6-12 years old)
FREE for Children 5 and UnderSHUTTLE service will be provided to and from Kroger Marketplace at Chenal Parkway.This year’s cultural vistas include:

Asia – Asian New Year festivals inspire LANTERNS! Hosted by Northington Investment Group, this vista’s serene Asian Woodland Garden & Pavilion are bedecked with paper lanterns and a traditional Chinese dragon. Sushi rolls, warming teas and sips of Sake beckon patrons to immerse themselves in demonstrations and traditions of Asian culture where families explore Eastern artistic traditions. Discover why it’s the Year of the Snake!

Bavaria – Visit the Park’s beer garden and polka to the sounds of The Itinerant Locals! This lively duo will have you dancing yourself into a pretzel under the full moon. Refresh your palate with German fare beneath the Maibaum and enjoy a lakeside feast for the eyes in the winter woodlands.

The Caribbean Warm up next to the fire pits along the shoreline, enjoy a show by the Park’s famed pirates (Armadillo Rodeo Improv Troupe), walk the plank, and seek your treasure in Pirates Cove.

Greece Travel back in time to the mythical land of ancient Greece where you’ll be greeted by living statues. Don your laurel wreath and help reconstruct ancient glory with vista hostess Christen Bufford and her team from Little Rock Central High School. Try a taste of lighter fare, maybe some Ouzo.

New Orleans Hot jazz continues all night indoors on Bourbon Street, where guests will delight in Cajun fare, signature beverages, and a fortune-telling Voodoo Queen! Thoma Thoma hosts our high-spirited Café du Monde while the kings & queens of this party feast on beignets!

Rio de Janeiro Café Bossa Nova, Vivian Norman and Patti Stanley are teaming up to take you on an adventure to colorful South America! Learn to Samba the night away while dining on exquisite authentic cuisine and sipping on caipirinhas.

Shakespeare’s England Hosted by Elizabeth and Tom Small with performances by the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, this vista transports you to Elizabethan England, complete with street urchins, fresh-roasted turkey legs, ale and kidfriendly Shakesbeer.

Venice The Park’s iconic Gazebo awaits sailors and ladies with a monumental selection of sweet treats! Commedia dell Arte performances will have you silly with glee! Launch wishing lanterns at the gazebo; your hopes and dreams will glow bright throughout this enchanting evening!

AIN’T NOTHING BUT A THANG continues at the Weekend Theater

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2262749picThe Weekend Theatre’s latest production is Marlin T. Tazewell’s Ain’t NothingBut a Thang.  The production opened last weekend and continues this weekend and next.  Performances are at 7:30pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

Tickets are $16 for general admission, and $12 for students and seniors age 65 and older. Tickets can be purchased at www.weekendtheater.org or, based on availability, at the door. For information only, call 501-374-3761.

Director Liz Clarke was searching for a modern play to submit for Black History Month when she found Tazewell’s script last year and was intrigued by the story line. And once she read it, she was convinced it was something she wanted to direct.

Winner of the 1999 National AIDS Fund/CFDA-Vogue Initiative Playwriting Award, this gripping drama is the story of one black family struggling to survive, and remembering that each new curve life throws them “ain’t nothing but a thang” with which all of them must deal.

“The main theme of the play revolves around the decisions we make and the end result of these decisions. There is no ‘bad guy’ in this play,” Clarke says.

Rachel (Kelani Campbell), the mother of the family, struggles with drug use and thoughts that she isn’t good enough, hasn’t done enough, and isn’t loved by her kids. Oldest son Matt (Marquis Bullock) left home to pursue a college degree and better himself; he loves his family, but can’t allow himself to be drawn back in to their drama, no matter how guilty he feels about leaving. Middle son Kintai (Micheal Lowe), styles himself as a “dealer in higher plains of existence” – that is, a dope dealer. The youngest, 14-year-old Amber (Jess Carson), has been promiscuous and because of that, has contracted HIV, and just wants to know if someone cares if she lives or dies.

Also in the Fazes family orbit are Sara (Wendy Darr) Amber’s best friend, and Caveman (Justin Pike), a pal to Matt and Kintai.

And as the drama unfolds, the choices are … not so easy, really. “This play is not black or white – it is muddied shades of gray,” Clarke says. “Everyone in ‘Ain’t Nothing But a Thang’ is presented with a fork in the road and it’s their choice as to which road to take. “

Lard and the Bard, or Shakespeare in the South Part II

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schedule~~element27Following the success of last year’s special Shakespeare in the South at Tales from the South, the second edition returns tomorrow night, February 12. (It is Lincoln’s birthday – and he was a fan of Shakespeare, so you can celebrate the 16th President’s birthday by attending.)

Authors Jay Jennings, Hope Coulter and Greg Brownderville will regale the audience with stories centered around finding themselves, others, and even the South in the Bard. The live taping of the radio series will be at Starving Artist Café in the Argenta Arts District. Live music by Shelley King and blues guitarist Mark Simpson.

Doors open at 5pm, dinner is served 5pm-6:30pm and the show starts at 7pm. Tickets are $5 for the show, plus the cost of dinner. Seating is very limited. Tickets can be purchased online at www.talesfromthesouth.com.

“Tales from the South” is recorded on Tuesdays during “Dinner and a Show” at Starving Artist Café. The show airs locally on KUAR Thursdays at 7pm and is syndicated by World Radio Network, a satellite radio distribution service, available to more than 130 million listeners worldwide.

Shows are also distributed nationwide to multiple public radio stations by PRX (Public Radio Exchange). Podcasts are available on ITunes, the NPR website, the KUAR website, the PRX website, and the “Tales from the South” website.

Mary Birthday

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It is Oscar month, so it is fitting to highlight at Arkansas’ own Academy Award winning actress, Mary Steenburgen on her birthday.  She was born on February 8, 1953 in Newport, Arkansas.  After moving to North Little Rock as a schoolgirl, she attended North Little Rock public schools and had her first starring role as Emily in the 1971 North Little Rock Northeast High School production of Our Town, which was the new school’s first play.

After moving the start of a successful film career, she started returning to the stage in a London production of Holiday in 1987.  In 1993, she made her Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Candida (during Roundabout’s initial season with a Broadway house).  Her costars included Robert Foxworth and Robert Sean Leonard.

The next year, she starred in Marvin’s Room in Los Angeles.  She returned to the New York City stage with 2000′s The Beginning of August at the Atlantic Theatre Company.  Steenburgen has remained an active supporter and is now a member of Atlantic.  In 2007 she and husband Ted Danson were honored by the Atlantic Theatre Company.

Throughout her career, Mary Steenburgen has been a champion of the arts in Central Arkansas.  She has long been a supporter of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, where she and Danson served as honorary chairs of the Rep’s recent successful capital campaign.  In addition, she has been very involved in two other Central Arkansas arts endeavors.  Steenburgen has spoken at acting workshops and lent her support in many other ways for The THEA Foundation (which encourages arts education in Arkansas).

Steenburgen has also been a supporter of theOxford American magazine as well as the new Argenta Community Theatre in North Little Rock.  She and another Arkansan, President Bill Clinton, headlined the grand opening of this complex in 2011.

Jets and Sharks in the Rock

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Celebrity Attractions is bringing the national tour of West Side Story to Little Rock this week.  It will be at Robinson Center Music Hall on January 29, 30 and 31.

West Side Story features a book by Arthur Laurents and songs by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein.  This modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet was originally directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

The show was originally on Broadway in 1957.  In 2009, an award-winning Broadway revival opened. The current tour is based on the revival.

For this tour, Arthur Laurents’ direction has been recreated by David Saint.  Joey McKneely reproduced the choreography both on Broadway and for the tour.  He studied West Side Story with Jerome Robbins as they worked on creating Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.

The design team includes James Youmans, David C. Woolard, Howell Binkley and Peter McBoyle.

For tickets, visit the Celebrity Attractions website.

GEE’S BEND at Arkansas Rep

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Quilts are not just coverings for warmth, they often tell a story.  The quilts and quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama are the focus of the play Gee’s Bend, which opened on Friday night at the Arkansas Rep and continues through February 1

Gee’s Bend was written by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder.  It follows a group of women as they turn to quilting to provide comfort and creative expression to their lives. Pieced together from discarded clothes and seasoned with laughter and tears, the women sew a patchwork of inventive abstract designs in rich, blazing colors.

The play opens in 1939, with the beginning of the era of African-American land ownership. The story then advances to 1965, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement and the historic visit to Gee’s Bend by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The production concludes in 2002, on the eve of the unveiling of “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

Gee’s Bend was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers Project, where it received a staged reading in 2006 and premiered in January 2007. A graduate of the dramatic writing program at New York University, Wilder received the American Theatre Critics Association’s 2008 Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright.

Gee’s Bend is directed by Gilbert McCauley, who has directed several plays previously at the Rep.  The cast features Corey Jones, Nambi E. Kelley, Shannon Lamb and Monica Parks.   The design team includes Mike Nichols (scenery), Yslan Hicks (costumes), John Horner (lighting), Allan Branson (sound) and Lynda J. Kwallek (props). Robert Hupp is the Producing Artistic Director of the Arkansas Rep.

The Rep’s production of Gee’s Bend is supported and sponsored by The Design Group, Philander Smith College, Arora, Delta Airlines and the Little Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.  It is also made possible in part by a grant from the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame Foundation, a component fund of the Arkansas Community Fund.

3 Pigs and 3 Goats Up Next at AAC Children’s Theatre

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Two childhood tales of animal sibling trios are combined in the latest offering of the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre.  Opening tomorrow night, The Three Little Pigs and Three Billy Goats Gruff is a witty musical production full of whimsy that takes its audience to a magical land where pigs and goats talk, trolls reside under bridges, and wolves huff and puff.

The play, written by Children’s Theatre Associate Director Keith Smith, opens with the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The three young goats are grazing in Gruff Valley, but wonder if the grass really is greener on the other side of the bridge. They have heard tales of greener pastures, but exploration to those lands is hindered by a troll that lives under the bridge. The three goats hatch a plan to
defeat the troll, giving him the “what-for,” and earning passage to the luscious lands beyond. They carry out their plan, but find some surprising truths along the way.

On the other side of the troll’s bridge, meadows are lush and pigs live in houses! The second part of the play focuses on another famous set of siblings: the three pigs. After Mama Pig sends out the three piglets to find their own way in the world, each decides on a different way to establish their new life. Dennis, the Big Bad Wolf, is just as interested in how each decides to construct their new home as he is in Grandpa Bill’s famous recipe for piggy pie. The classic story provides the basis for this retelling, but the characters are sure to provide a new form of entertainment for both the young and young-at-heart.

The production runs from January 25 through February 10.  Public performances take place on Friday evenings at 7pm, Saturday afternoons at 3pm and Sunday afternoons at 2pm.

Bradley Anderson is the Artistic Director of the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre.  Dr. Todd Herman is the Executive Director of the Arkansas Arts Center.