LITTLE ROCK — Cliff Fannin Baker will take over Jan. 1 as artistic director and chief executive officer of the Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts.
Baker, who founded the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in1976, will replace Wildwood founder Ann Chotard, who retired as artistic director in March.
The Wildwood Board of Trustees is still seeking a managing director to handle the park's administration, said board Chairman Dennis Berry. It is also seeking to quickly hire a staff.
The staff at Wildwood had shrunk to interim Executive Director Sharon Blackwood, a bookkeeper and several volunteers.
Blackwood, a former executive director at the Rep, said she will remain at Wildwood through the end of the year to help Baker with the transition.
In June, Baker directed a production of Gian Carlo Menotti's one-act opera The Medium at Wildwood, spurring speculation in the arts community that he might become Chotard's successor.
Berry said Baker's programming vision will take on a wider scope than opera, which was the performing arts park's original focus and on which Chotard had mainly concentrated in the last years of her tenure.
"We'll be doing some of the things we've wanted to do for quite a while, which is to bring back more performances and more artistic variety to Wildwood, rather than only opera out there," Berry said.
Baker, he added, "will be working with other arts organizations in the state and in the region to promote more art. Opera is a vital part of what we do out there, a historic part, and it will continue to be a part of what we do out there. We're still going to have a full season of opera, but we're going to do other programs to supplement [it]. There will be other art forms added to our venue."
Berry said Wildwood would divide its schedule between putting on its own productions and renting or making the venue available for other performing groups.
"We are still going to produce some of our own shows, but Cliff is not going to direct all the shows out there; he is going to bring people in," Berry said. "We're going to do some presenting as well, and give other up-and-coming or successful artists a venue in central Arkansas to present their shows."
Wildwood's 625-seat Lucy Lockett Cabe Festival Theatre, named for Wildwood's now-deceased largest donor, precludes the park from bringing in many big-name touring acts.
"But there are other groups that this venue will work nicely for, and we believe that there are people in the community that are interested in seeing shows that are not mainstream shows," Berry said.
Baker, who is guest-directing a production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in Portland, Ore., did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday.
Baker, who stepped aside as the Rep's founding producing and artistic director in 1999 but has continued to direct at least one show a year there, will direct Doubt by John Patrick Shanley at the Rep in February.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 10/31/2007