LITTLE ROCK — That ’80s Show: We
Built This ‘SMITTY’
on Rock and Roll
7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Nov. 2-5, Wildwood Park for the Arts, 20919 Denny Road, Little Rock
Tickets: $25-$35, $10 students; reserved seating
(501) 378-0405
www.therep.org
Expect lots of hair, leather and leg warmers as the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s Young Artists take their salute to the 1980s — before most of them were born — on the road, at least out west to Wildwood Park for the Arts.
Dubbed That ’80s Show: We Built This ‘SMITTY’ on Rock and Roll, opening Wednesday, the production will showcase the talents of the participants in the Summer Musical Theatre Intensive (or SMTI, nicknamed “SMITTY” by the students).
The summer training, twoweek sessions for two classes, started in 2005 and attracts students ages 10 to 23 from more than 25 central Arkansas schools. There are 61 cast members for the new show, which had its beginnings in the summer sessions.
Nicole Capri, the Rep’s resident director and director of education, is directing the show, and as someone who began her career as an intern at the Rep in 1988, the decade being honored has special meaning to her.
“I was a student, a fashion victim, at Little Rock Central High School in the ’80s,” she says. “And it’s interesting how things from then are coming back around, from the Charlie’s Angels show to the ‘Where’s the beef?’ commercials, shoulder pads, neon and even a reworking of the show Dallas.
“Plus it gave me a legitimate reason to have my hair really big again.”
As she began writing and preparing the show, Capri read more than 20 books on the decade, from the Cold War and the Reagan era to the birth of MTV, along with fads, trends and pop culture. The show includes a tribute to some pop music “one-hit wonders.”
Cast members include Mary Katelin Ward, a senior at North Little Rock High School-West Campus and a charter member of SMTI, back for her seventh season. Her resume includes roles in 12 MainStage productions at the Rep, where her favorite role was the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. Stacy Hawking, also a senior at North Little Rock High School-West Campus, has been involved in SMTI for five years and a dancer for 14 years. She is working as the Rep’s high school intern this fall. Charlie Askew, a member of the Four Reps Barbershop Quartet, has also been in shows at the Arkansas Arts Center.
Along with the show’s namesake song (Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City”), the show will also feature the songs “Man in the Mirror,” “Maniac,” “Step by Step,” “Jack and Diane” and “Sweet Child of Mine” (which Capri describes as her “absolute favorite,” as done by a 16-year-old who sings it as if he was a 40-year-old rocker).
“I rewrote the lyrics of the Billy Joel song, ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ so that every reference in it is to the 1980s,” Capri says. “And the set, which cast members thought should be like Saved By the Bell, is what we thought of back then as sort of techno/ futuristic. The costumes are what take center stage, and you see every possible stereotypical character from the decade, from the Tom Cruise type to the big-hair metal band members, to yuppies and the Madonna ‘Material Girl’ sort.
Style, Pages 27 on 10/25/2011