Since today is Elizabeth Eckford’s birthday, the past Arkansas Rep production that is featured is 2007’s The Legacy Project: It Happened in Little Rock.
Culled from three years of research and over 80 interviews, playwright and director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj created a multi-faceted play with music that explored stories past and present of Central High’s desegregation and the legacy the events of those years have provided citizens of Little Rock, of Arkansas and of the United States.
The cast featured Destan Owens (playing parallel roles of a 1957 Harlem reporter and a 2007 artist (a stand-in for Maharaj) as well as nine other actors who played multiple roles of diverse ethnicity — from current Central students to the Little Rock Nine, from elected officials to blue-collar workers. Those actors were J. Bernard Calloway, Mary-Pat Green, Taifa Harris, Shannon Lamb, Vanessa Lemonides, Arthur W. Marks, Gia McGlone, Nick Petrie and Julian Rebolledo.
The creative team included Sybil Roberts Williams (dramaturg), Michael Susko (choreographer and assistant director), Charles Creath (musical director) Steve Hudelson (musician), Mike Nichols (scenic design), Matthew Webb (lighting design), Leslie Bernstein (costume design), M. Jason Pruzin (sound design) and Lynda Kwallek (properties). Producing Artistic Director Bob Hupp and Education Director Leslie Golden were also involved in shepherding the project over the years.
Funding for the production came, in part, from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The production ran from September 14 to September 30, 2007, in conjunction with other events commemorating the 50th anniversary.
In 2008, Maharaj directed a play called Little Rock Off Broadway. While a separate piece of drama, it was based on the research he conducted and infused by his experiences creating The Legacy Project: It Happened in Little Rock.
The Little Rock Culture Vulture debuted on Saturday, October 1, 2011, to kick off Arts & Humanities Month.
August Wilson received his second Pulitzer for The Piano Lesson in 1990. It was thirteen years later, that play would take the stage of Arkansas Rep in January 2003 And while he was not the lead, local favorite Lawrence Hamilton shone in the play.
Twenty-five years ago (1993), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was joined on Broadway in late 1993 with its second half Angels in America: Perestroika.
After nearly three decades of shows on Broadway, Neil Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 play Lost in Yonkers. Though darker in tone than many of his plays, it still provided a host of laughs.
The line “Valium is my favorite color” was uttered on the Arkansas Rep stage in 2012 when the Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal was performed.
Fourteen years after graduating from Little Rock Hall High School, David Auburn received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play Proof. In September 2002, Arkansas Repertory Theatre produced Proof while the original Broadway run was in its final months.
Little Rock Culture Vulture 