Category Archives: Theatre

Rep SMTI Performers go SINGIN’ ON A STAR

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Tonight and two times tomorrow, the performers from the Arkansas Rep’s Summer Musical Theatre Intensive will perform Singing’ on a Star.  It is this year’s Young Artists’ Production, an annual performance by The Rep’s SMTI (Summer Musical Theatre Intensive) theatre training program. The Summer Musical Theater Intensive, under the direction of Nicole Capri, The Rep’s Resident Director and Director of Education, is an audition-based theatre training program designed for motivated young artists who are serious about musical theatre.

The SMTI staff is comprised of professional directors, choreographers, musicians and designers. Daily rehearsals are structured similarly to a professional summer stock experience and include instruction in musical theatre techniques, multi-media, costume and stage makeup, dance and vocal coaching. Each session culminates in a public workshop performance of a selected musical or musical revue on the Arkansas Repertory Theatre MainStage.

Following the summer workshops, the production is refined, reworked and remounted at The Rep in the fall for patrons of all ages. This fall’s production is conceived and directed by Capri, and it’s all about the actor’s journey from stardust to stardom. With song selections from the pop charts and the Great White Way, The Rep’s young artists sing about big dreams in the Big Apple this fall!

Improv Little Rock Season Finale This Weekend

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Fri 7/6 at 10pm: ReQuest 20/90
ILR kicks off it’s Season VII finale weekend with ReQuest 20/90. Watch as ILR attempts the unthinkable–performing 20 short-form scenes and games in only 90 minutes. And the best part, you the audience, picks out which scenes we perform from beginning to end.

Sat 7/7 at 10pm: Oregon Trail
ILR rings out Season VII with a bang as we present Oregon Trail. That’s right. We’re bringing the classic computer game to life in this new long-form show. Watch our improvisers hit the Oregon Trail in our Conestoga Wagon train, as we hunt, get snake-bit, and face the real, and not so real, plights of pioneer life. Just don’t die of dysentery.

Both shows 7/6 & 7/7 take place at the PUBLIC Theatre. Admission is $8 at the door.

Final Weekend for A LOSS OF ROSES at Arkansas Rep

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Theatregoers hoping to not lose out on on Pulitzer Prize winner William Inge’s A Loss of Roses have a few remaining performances to catch it at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre.

The production, directed by Tony nominee and Obie winner Austin Pendleton, stars Tony nominee Jane  Summerhays, Bret Lada and Jean Lichty as a mother, son and a visitor from their past who resurfaces.

Pendleton directed a staged reading of A Loss of Roses featured in TONGUES at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre in 2010. Pendleton has served as artistic director of the Circle Repertory Theatre Company in New York and is an ensemble member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

“Bringing a rarely-produced work by William Inge to the stage is cause for celebration; doubly so when the creative team is led by Austin Pendleton,” says Arkansas Rep Producing Artistic Director Robert Hupp. “He’s assembled a dynamic cast for this fascinating play. Arkansas Rep is honored to introduce A Loss of Roses to a new generation of theatregoers and to re-examine Inge in the context of what he spoke of as his favorite among his many works.”

The cast also features Todd Gearhart, Max Jenkins and Sara Croft as members of a traveling troupe of actors and Keegan McDonald, Katye Dunn and Sydni Whitfield as neighbors of the central family.

A Loss of Roses plays tonight at 7pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday, July 1 at 7pm.

Ark Shakes’ TWELFTH NIGHT at Wildwood

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The Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night journeys not to Illyria but the Little Rock this weekend.

After being performed at Hendrix College the first two weeks of its run, the production is being performed at Wildwood Park for the Arts this weekend.  Performances continue tonight at 7:30pm and tomorrow at 7:30pm.

Twelfth Night is directed by Rebekah Scallet, the producing artistic director of Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre.   The cast includes Nisi Sturgis, Chad Bradford, Kevin Browne, Ron Thomas, Jordan Coughtry, Heather Dupree, Tim Sailer and Curtis Jackson. Miss Sturgis and Messrs. Browne and Coughtry appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association.

Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre summarizes Twelfth Night thusly:

After a tragic shipwreck, Viola washes up on shore on the unknown island of Illyria.  Believing her brother to be lost, she disguises herself as a boy in order to seek shelter as a servant to the Duke Orsino.  Her plans quickly go awry, however, when she falls in love with the Duke, who is already in love with the Countess Olivia, who falls in love with Viola, whom she thinks is a boy.   Mistaken identities, missed signals, and mischievous mayhem abound in one of the Bard’s most romantic and delightful comedies.

Ark Arts Childrens Theatre 2012-13 Season

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The Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre has announced the 2012-2013 season.

The season will kick off with Madeline and the Gypsies from September 21 through October 7.  In this adaptation of Ludwig Bemelmans classic children’s story, the irrepressible Madeline and her friend Pepito are stranded during an outing at the rousing gypsy circus.

Bunnicula will be on stage October 26 – November 11, 2012. Bunnicula by James Howe has been a hit with kids and their parents since the book was published in 1979.

The season continues with the holiday show City Mouse, Country Mouse, Christmas House on stage November 30 – December 16, 2012. A Children’s Theatre premiere, this musical is based on Aesop’s fable about a country mouse who is invited to visit her cousin in the city for Christmas.

The Three Little Pigs and Three Billy Goats Gruff will be on stage January 25 – February 10, 2013. The Children’s Theatre will present these classic stories back to back in a witty musical production.

The Princess and the Pea, a Children’s Theatre premiere, will come to life on stage March 8 – 24, 2013. This classic tale of royal courtship is told in a fresh new way.

The 2012-13 season will end with Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, on stage April 26 – May 12, 2013.

Performances are held Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. City Mouse, Country Mouse, Christmas House will have an additional performance on Saturdays at 1 p.m. as well as 3 p.m. The Princess and the Pea will have special Spring Break matinees in addition to the normal performance times.

Tickets are $12 for children and adults. Season ticket packages are available. The season is sponsored by Landers Fiat and Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. Bradley Anderson is the Artistic Director of the Children’s Theatre; Todd Herman is the Executive Director of the Arkansas Arts Center.

Call 501-372-4000 for more information.

Next up at Arkansas Rep: William Inge’s A LOSS OF ROSES

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The original version of William Inge’s A Loss of Roses will open this Friday on June 15, 2012, at Arkansas Repertory Theatre. The revival will be directed by Tony nominee and Obie winner Austin Pendleton.

“I discovered A Loss of Roses a few years ago. I thought: this is a forgotten beautiful American play, full of colorful people and rich, juicy humor, and full of tragedy,” says Pendleton. “Since I read it, I’ve wanted to do it. I’m thrilled a theatre as good as Arkansas Rep is letting me do it.”

Pendleton directed a staged reading of A Loss of Roses featured in TONGUES at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre in 2010. Pendleton has served as artistic director of the Circle Repertory Theatre Company in New York and is an ensemble member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Pendleton says several of Inge’s plays have been revived by theatre artists wanting to tackle the playwright’s well-made plays. However, A Loss of Roses has remained mostly on the shelf since it closed on Broadway in 1959.

Arkansas Rep’s production will feature Jean Lichty as Lila Green, Tony nominee Jane Summerhays as Helen Baird and Bret Lada as Kenny.

“Bringing a rarely-produced work by William Inge to the stage is cause for celebration; doubly so when the creative team is led by Austin Pendleton,” says Arkansas Rep Producing Artistic Director Robert Hupp. “He’s assembled a dynamic cast for this fascinating play. Arkansas Rep is honored to introduce A Loss of Roses to a new generation of theatregoers and to re-examine Inge in the context of what he spoke of as his favorite among his many works.”

A Loss of Roses was Inge’s first big setback after a string of critical and commercial successes with Bus Stop and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Picnic. The production was plagued by cast and script changes, earned poor reviews and closed after only three weeks on stage. Inge felt the play was one of his best, and was said to be stung by the criticisms.

“This play is not the play that was produced in New York last November,” Inge writes in his foreword in 1960. “It was greatly changed by the time the play opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. Now I can’t remember why all the changes were thought necessary at the time, but working under the pressure that exists in theatre today, people become excited and mistrust their best instincts.”

A Loss of Roses will run June 15 – July 1, 2012, at Arkansas Repertory Theatre at 601 Main Street, Little Rock?

Clinton School presents panel on Ark Rep’s A LOSS OF ROSES

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The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service will host a panel discussion with Tony Award-nominated director Austin Pendleton and cast members of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of A Loss of Roses.  The panel will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, June 13 at 12 noon at Sturgis Hall in Clinton Presidential Park. The program is free and open to the public.

A Loss of Roses is a little-known William Inge masterpiece that tells the story of two women struggling to make their lives bearable in a small Kansas town. Penned in the intimate style of Tennessee Williams, who was Inge’s mentor, A Loss of Roses is a bittersweet romance about the loss of innocence which garnered a young Warren Beatty a Tony Award nomination in the 1959 Broadway production. The play will run on The Rep’s stage from June 13 to July 1.

Director Austin Pendleton starred in the original cast of Fiddler on the Roof (and can be heard on the original cast recording). Since the 1960s he has had successful careers as an actor, playwright, director, lyricist, teacher and administrator.  In addition to his Tony nomination for directing Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton in The Little Foxes, he has received the Clarence Derwent Award (for Hail Strawdyke) and Obie Award (The Last Sweet Days of Isaac).  Among his many films are What’s Up Doc? and the Academy Award winning My Cousin Vinny.