CONWAY — William Shakespeare was born in a town upon the River Avon, and made his fame as an actor and playwright on the banks of the River Thames.
That’s the connection the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre is making to this summer’s large-scale musical, Big River, one of four productions (three by Shakespeare) onstage in repertory through July 1, primarily at two venues in Conway but including a late-month side trip to Little Rock, for the Shakespeare Festival of Arkansas.
What’s being billed as the state’s only professional Shakespeare festival kicks off with the Bard’s raucous comedy Twelfth Night at 7:30 p.m. today, Saturday, Sunday and June 15 and 17 at the Village at Hendrix College, 1600 Washington Ave.
The outdoor production moves June 22-24 (all shows at 7:30 p.m.) to Butler Hill at Wildwood Park for the Arts, 20919 Denny Road, Little Rock.
Admission to all the Conway performances are “pay what you can”; take your own chairs or blankets. Wildwood tickets are $20, $15 for children; the park is providing chairs.
Rebekah Scallet, in her first year as the Shakespeare Theatre’s producing artistic director, is directing the play, about a young woman washed up on the shore of Illyria after a shipwreck she believes has cost the life of her twin brother.
Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the local duke, with whom she falls in love; he has set his sights, however, on a grieving countess. She in turn falls in love with the “boy” the duke has sent to woo her on his behalf.
More mistaken identities result when the brother appears, confusing the countess, whose household is enmeshed in a plot to confound her self-centered major domo.
“We’re setting it in the Edwardian period, around the turn of the 20th century,” Scallet explains. “This play has so much to do with class, especially with the servant-master relationship.”
Scallet, who succeeded founder Matt Chiorini at the festival’s helm last summer, is an Arkansas native, with a Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from Illinois State University.
She also has a long history with Twelfth Night — she has directed it three times, including last year for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival.
And her first Shakespeare experience was as the stage manager for a 1998 MacArthur Park production by the now-defunct, Little Rock-based Shakespeare Festival of Arkansas. (Her late father, Andrew, was on that company’s board; her sister, Dori, an actress, played one of the fairies in the Little Rock festival’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1995.)
Conway native Nisi Sturgis, an alumna of the University of Central Arkansas, will be playing Viola. Among her professional credits: a recurring role in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
The Wildwood performances will include a preshow put on by students in the Shakespeare Theatre’s summer “Groundlings” camp there.
The rest of the repertory lineup, all in the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall at the University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway:
Big River (music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by William Hauptman, based on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn): 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 14, 27-28 and 30, 1 p.m. Sunday, June 17, 23-24
Shakespeare’s Richard III: 7:30 p.m. June 16, 20-21, 28, 1 p.m. July 1.
Big River tickets are $27; Richard III tickets are $27, $22 for children.
A reduced-length, sortof-children’s version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: 10 a.m. June 20, June 22-23, 27, 29-30. All tickets are $10. “I did the edit,” says Scallet, who directed a similar version at Illinois State. “So I had it in my back pocket when I came here. We’ll have almost the same design team, and they all know the show really well. And it gives us the opportunity to change things we didn’t like.”
Dan Matisa, the only performer who will have appeared in all six Shakespeare Theatre seasons, will play the title role in Richard III and Huck’s Pap in Big River. Sturgis will also appear in Richard III as Queen Elizabeth.
“It’s very special to be able to work with Nisi, who in addition to being an amazing and accomplished performer is also an old friend from Arkansas Governor’s School,” Scallet says.
Ticket information and a complete schedule are available at arkshakes.com. Call (501) 852-0702 or e-mail rscallet@uca.edu.
Weekend, Pages 32 on 06/07/2012