Love thee, thrice: Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre toasts 10 years with trio of romantic tales

CONWAY -- The course of true love will not run smooth in any of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre's three 10th anniversary season productions.

Plenty of star-crossed loving will go on in all three of the theater's principal productions in the annual summer festival, which opens Friday. And for the first time in several years, all will be performed at the University of Central Arkansas.

That includes the season opener, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with nine outdoor performances on the lawn in front of the university's McAlister Hall. In recent years, the festival has staged its outdoor shows across town on the Village at Hendrix College and on a parking lot in North Little Rock's downtown Argenta Arts District.

What is likely Shakespeare's most-performed comedy involves two young Athenian women and two young Athenian men, both pursuing the same maiden. With a little supernatural help and connivance on the part of a band of mischievous fairies, they eventually come together in properly sorted couples. A side plot involves those same fairies and six "hard-handed men of Athens ... who never labored in their minds, til now," rehearsing to put on what results in a hilarious play for the final wedding scene.

Indoors, on the stage of the university's Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall, will be Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet and the musical West Side Story, which translates that play's couple and their feuding families into a New York turf war between Puerto Rican and Caucasian gangs. As has been the theater's custom in recent years, the audience will sit on the stage for these shows; it limits the audience to about 200, admits Executive Director Mary Ruth Marotte, but it provides "an intimate experience for everybody."

"Fiddler on the Roof last year was right in front of you," she says. "You felt like you were actually part of the wedding."

Greatest hits?

Both Shakespeare shows are reprises from early seasons.

"This will be our first time since the festival was founded that we're going back to shows we've done before," says Artistic Director Rebekah Scallet, who is also directing A̶ ̶M̶i̶d̶s̶u̶m̶m̶e̶r̶ ̶N̶i̶g̶h̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶D̶r̶e̶a̶m̶ Romeo and Juliet*.

"With any Shakespeare festival, eventually you have to go back and do things [again], because there's only so many plays Shakespeare wrote. But in honor of the 10th anniversary I wanted to do shows that really 'blow it out,' really great celebratory Shakespeare shows that everyone loves. So it really seems fitting to go back -- Midsummer was our first year, so there was something really nice going back the same way the festival started."

Marotte adds, "We wanted to view some of the big shows for the 10th anniversary, and return to some of the bigger names. We hadn't done A Midsummer Night's Dream since the first season, so we thought it would be a fine one to do, and hadn't done Romeo and Juliet since the second season."

Setting the scenes

S̶c̶a̶l̶l̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ Director Robert Quinlan, who helmed productions of Richard III and Hamlet for the theater, is setting his* A Midsummer Night's Dream in the 1930s, and very musically, "with the fairies also doubling as band members, with Jordan Coughtry, who has written original music for us before -- he did the music for Two Gents [Two Gentlemen of Verona] and for Twelfth Night -- writing original music. And he's playing Puck, acting as kind of an emcee and also the lead musician.

"Their magic is very musical. There's also some band members onstage that aren't part of the cast."

Coughtry, who previously has appeared with the theater in the title role in Hamlet, is also playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Nisi Sturgis, whose AST credits include Viola in Twelfth Night and Elizabeth in Richard III, plays Titania (and also the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet). Dan Matisa reprises his comic role as Bottom the Weaver.

Staging the outdoor production at UCA involves working the trees on the McAlister Hall lawn into the set, "so it's a shadier, woodsier spot," Marotte says.

Also, it's only steps away from the exhibition UCA is hosting that centers on a copy of the First Folio, on display 12:30-7:30 p.m. today-July 12 in Baum Gallery inside McAlister Hall. (See accompanying story.) Patrons can view the book and accompanying educational material, paired with a 10th anniversary Shakespeare Theatre retrospective, and head out onto the lawn to see Shakespeare's words made flesh.

Meanwhile, Scallet says, d̶i̶r̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶R̶o̶b̶e̶r̶t̶ ̶Q̶u̶i̶n̶l̶a̶n̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶m̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶d̶u̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶<̶e̶m̶>̶R̶i̶c̶h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶I̶I̶I̶<̶/̶e̶m̶>̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶<̶e̶m̶>̶H̶a̶m̶l̶e̶t̶<̶/̶e̶m̶>̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶,̶

she* has set Romeo and Juliet right where Shakespeare did: in Verona, Italy, during the Renaissance. "It's the first production since I've been artistic director that we've done in a Renaissance setting," Scallet says.

In the title roles: Sophina Saggau and AST second-year veteran Haulston Mann, who will also be playing match-and-mix-and-match-again lovers Hermia and Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Pairing it with West Side Story fulfills a long-term goal for Scallet: "Since I got here [in August 2011, taking over from founder Matt Chiorini] and started working with the festival and saw the way it was set up, [that] they did a musical every year as part of the festival, I've been wanting to do those two shows together. The 10th anniversary year seemed like a great time to do it."

Marotte adds, "Since West Side Story is quite a big show and a little more difficult to cast in Arkansas, it needed to be a time when we felt we could handle it."

Jeremy Williams, who has been the director/choreographer for past AST productions of Pippin and Fiddler on the Roof, is the director. Lauren Langbaum and Dylan Stasack play Maria and Tony, respectively; Michelle Alves reprises the key role of Anita, which she played in a recent National Broadway tour.

Scallet notes the many parallels, not just the plotline, between the tragedy and the musical, including a lot of similar phrasing.

"The theme and a lot of words that are repeated; Romeo and Juliet is full of moon and sun and stars imagery that are also all through West Side Story," she explains, noting that it has been fun to work with the connections that lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist Arthur Laurents pulled from Shakespeare's text. "They translated is all really nicely."

Bard on the road

AST veteran actor Chad Bradford makes his directorial debut with this summer's touring show, an hour-long, family-friendly adaptation of Twelfth Night. (He'll also be playing Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Gladhand in West Side Story.)

Scallet says this year's tour will have an expanded reach.

"We were lucky enough to get a [National Endowment for the Arts] grant, and that's supporting the tour," she says. "Last year we went to seven locations; this year we're going up to 10, and we're also planning to bring it back in the fall and and take it to schools. We only do summer shows, so schools are always out of session by the time we get our shows up, so we wanted the opportunity to do something to make sure as many young people as possible could have access to it."

The production opens with a 2 p.m. June 30 matinee in Reynolds Performance Hall with additional 10 a.m. shows July 1-2, then will head across the state in June and July.

Also on the festival schedule:

• A cocktail reception at 6 p.m. today in McCastlain Hall's newly renovated ballroom celebrates the opening of the "First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare" exhibition, with music and entertainment by actors and Shakespeare scholars. Admission is free.

• Chiorini will be the guest of honor at the UCA President's House at 5 p.m. Friday for a season kickoff cocktail reception. The $100 ticket includes admission to the opening night of A Midsummer Night's Dream, an appetizer buffet, wine and beer; Chiorini will discuss the origins of the festival. Also starting at 5, a shuttle will transport guests to Baum Gallery for a tour of the First Folio. Call (501) 269-9428 or (866) 810-0012, email mrmarotte@arkshakes.com or visit the website, arkshakes.com.

Still in the works (keep an eye on the website, arkshakes.com, and the Facebook page, facebook.com/arkshakes, for details):

• A June 27 cabaret evening featuring company members at the Studio Theatre, 320 W. Seventh St., Little Rock.

• A June 20 show called A Mexican Affair, a jazz cabaret collaboration between Williams and company member Rafa Reyes, who plays Bernardo in West Side Story and Paris in Romeo and Juliet.

Style on 06/07/2016

*CORRECTION: Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre’s producing artistic director Rebekah Scallet is the director of the theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet and Robert Quinlan is the director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A news release from the theater swapped the names of the directors and their plays, leading to the error appearing in this stor. That story also did not include two Midsummer Night’s Dream performances: 7:30 p.m. June 18 and 2 p.m. June 19. The theater’s summer festival runs through July 9 on the University of Central Arkansas campus in Conway.