CONWAY — Nisi Sturgis, who began her theatrical career at Conway High School, is back in town for the 10th season of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre.
She and her husband, Jordan Coughtry, who were married in Eureka Springs in 2013, are both professional actors and are accustomed to life on the road. It would seem that their 21-month-old son, Owen, has become accustomed to that lifestyle as well.
Owen sat patiently on Sturgis’ lap as his parents answered questions during a recent interview in the foyer of the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. And when he did become fidgety, one or both of his parents burst into song — all songs Coughtry has written for this year’s presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is part of the upcoming season.
In addition to writing the music for this Shakespeare comedy, Coughtry also appears as Puck in the show; he plays Mercurio in Romeo and Juliet as well.
Sturgis, too, has roles in both plays. Fresh off a tour of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and at the Berkeley (California) Repertory Theatre and the Seattle (Washington) Repertory Theatre, Sturgis will appear as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
Sturgis said Owen has already been in 20 states in his young life.
“He crawled in Maine, stood in Chicago, walked in Berkeley and spoke in Seattle,” Sturgis, 38, said, smiling.
“We are back for the 10th anniversary season of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre,” Sturgis said. “We are here with family … with not only my mother, Peggy Sturgis, but also with my Shakespeare family, with some of the best Shakespeare [actors] I’ve experienced in the country.
“I am so proud it has happened here,” she said. “I am proud to share it with Conway and the all of the people who have invested in it and in my life as an actor.”
Sturgis and Coughtry, who are both members of the Actors’ Equity Association, now live in Urbana, Illinois, where he is in graduate school working on a master’s degree in fine arts and acting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“And I am going to be teaching acting [at the same university] as an adjunct professor in the fall,” she said. “I hope to be able to go to full-time status next year.
“This is the first time, in a long time, that we will be in the same place at the same time … together,” she said.
“Owen has been doing just splendidly,” Sturgis said. “He has made friends all over the place. He’s seen more things in his young life than some people will see in a lifetime.”
Coughtry said their son may be developing into something of a “ham.”
“He loves to cheer and applaud,” Coughtry said with a laugh. “He may be living up to his middle name, ‘Wilder.’”
Sturgis said they gave Owen that middle name “because Jordan and I were doing the play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, when we got married.”
Sturgis, also the daughter of the late Harold Sturgis, is a 1996 graduate of Conway High School and a 2000 graduate of the University of Central Arkansas with a degree in theater. Following college graduation, she moved to San Diego, where she received a master’s degree from The Old Globe’s Graduate Acting Program.
She and Coughtry appeared in the 2012 AST season; she played Viola in Twelfth Night and Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, and he played Buckingham in Richard III and Feste in Twelfth Night. Coughtry appeared in the 2014 season as the title role in Hamlet and as Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and wrote the music for it, but Sturgis was pregnant at the time and helped as a voice coach.