Surely, he meant "full frontal nudity."
That's what had occurred in Angels in America, an epic "gay fantasia" awash in cultural and political liberalism, on the Arkansas Repertory Theater stage in downtown Little Rock in 1997.
But what the then-board member for The Rep said to me a year later--in explaining that the theater was enduring mildly worrisome financial setbacks probably attributable to offense taken at that production--was "full noodle frontity."
I thought he misspoke, though maybe that's what he meant.
The broader theatrical and cultural point--and there is one--was made superbly the other day on Facebook by Katherine Melhorn of Little Rock, a real estate sales pacesetter and current member of The Rep's board.
She wrote, "It's an anomaly that a city this small was able to sustain for 42 years a regional repertory theater. Our population/Southern bent does not normally sustain equity actors and the diverse choices of plays. So, it has been an extraordinary ride in and of itself."
Live theater that seeks to be modern and relevant--to stage the plays the professional troupes are performing--will present challenging and edgy subject matter. It needs the combined insulation of a bit more liberal thought than we have in the region and a lot more people than we have in the metropolitan area.
You need to have plenty of people left over after you've run off some, as you always will.
It's a credit to The Rep and Greater Little Rock, and even farther reaches, that the lights stayed on from 1976 until the other day.
On Tuesday, after business hours, local leaders are planning what they're calling a "May Day" rally on Main Street in front of The Rep. The idea is to advance the cause of saving the place, which is a million bucks in operating arrears and suspended indefinitely for work on designing a new and sustaining business model.
Getting flush for the short term with a million dollars in rescue donations won't be a snap, never mind the additional $4 million said to be needed long-term, including for capital improvement.
Some longtime donors are irritated that they got no heads-up months ago that a financial urgency of last week's abruptly announced magnitude was looming. They want an explanation. They'll demand new transparency.
Beyond that, they'll be asked to write checks without knowing what The Rep they're propping up will look like after it re-emerges from strategic retreat, assuming it re-emerges.
I brought all this up with the LifeQuest class of community-minded retirees Wednesday morning, about 18 hours after the abrupt announcement. And what I got back, in addition to grief and fervent devotion to saving The Rep, were complaints about esoteric plays, liberal plays and un-entertaining productions. I also got observations that the now-fancy Robinson Center is showing spectacles like The Lion King at ticket prices that deplete many folks' live-theater budgets.
One man said he didn't mind being challenged by subject matter from time to time. But he also wanted on occasion to go back to a time when The Rep presented a simple set and small cast in a hilarious comedy provoking health-enhancing guffaws.
I thought of Greater Tuna, a 1980s laugh riot about small-town rural life in the proudly professing "third-smallest city in Texas."
Sometimes, especially these days, you want to take an evening off from the news, enjoy a light early dinner, then go downtown to pay for passive acceptance of a little unburdened amusement. It needn't be an expensive musical.
These kinds of amateur critiques are easy, of course, and inevitably abundant on an occasion such as this one. Amateur critiques can be tiresome to those better informed on the intricate challenges. But amateurs offering critiques are also called donors and customers.
All suggestions should and will, I'm sure, go onto an agenda for the strategic "re-visioning," as someone regrettably put it last week.
What's worth trying to save, more than any show or type of production, is even one downtown Little Rock city block's vibrant human activity on a weeknight after the office buildings have been abandoned.
Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service, says a key to luring stellar students is the theater and the school's partnership with The Rep by which actors enhance panel discussions at the school and The Rep recognizes graduates.
But what's even more at stake is Little Rock's continuing ambition--its continuing presumptuousness--to be bigger than itself, to aim beyond its logical limitations.
When I put on Twitter last week that Tuesday's rally for The Rep was being planned, someone asked, "For what possible purpose?"
The purpose is what I just wrote in that preceding paragraph--to be a place where people rally in the street mainly for the sake of keeping their city audacious.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/29/2018