Pirate playwright 'pilfers' own ideas

Keith Smith can't quite pin down what was the most recent original play he wrote for the Arkansas Arts Center Children's Theatre.

"I can't even remember last year," he says.

Smith, the Children's Theatre's associate director, script doctor and resident playwright, estimates that he has created out of whole cloth maybe two dozen of the hundred shows he has penned, adapted and repurposed out of everything from fairy tales and nursery rhymes to historical events since he started scripting in 1988.

Smith's latest script is one of those: The Laughable Legend of Fancybeard the Bully Pirate, opening Friday at the Arts Center in Little Rock's MacArthur Park.

Reynaldo (Yusuf Richardson), Esmeralda (Joanna Huff) and Brian (Max Green), fifth-graders studying the ins and outs of piracy at a summer camp, the Tortuga Pirate Academy, must learn to collaborate and cooperate, using their individual strengths -- athletic prowess, linguistic powers and mathematical and musical skills, respectively -- to accomplish a common challenge on a jungle island. Factoring into the tale: the ghosts of an academy headmaster past (Mark Hansen) and of their greatest hero, the legendary Captain Fancybeard (Jeremy Matthey).

Projections onto a backdrop will help the audience keep track of what's going on -- for example, when the characters read writing embossed on a sword blade or a legend carved into a stone or examine a treasure map.

Though he usually directs one or two shows each season, Smith's only credit on this one is "playwright." Colleague John Isner is at the helm, with set design by Miranda Young, costumes designed by Erin Larkin, choreography by Erin Fowler and, as usual, musical direction by Lori Isner.

"It's not a musical, but we always do rely on music to create atmosphere and structure," Smith says.

Smith says he mooched the title character's name (playing on the hirsute nicknames of other legendary pirates, such as Blackbeard and Bluebeard) from a 2002 play with an even longer title, The Ballad of Candi the Cutout Cardboard Cowgirl and the Origami Fire Dragon, and its 2009 sequel, Rio Grandie Candi and ... The Mummy.

"It's not the same character," he says, "just the same name."

He agrees that children, for some reason, find pirates fascinating, to the point where they've become a popular fixture in literature and other forms of entertainment, from Long John Silver and Captain Hook to Jack Sparrow.

"I don't know what's so appealing about pirates, but there's certainly an allure," he says. That factored into discussions on what the Children's Theatre would program this season, when somebody (it may have been he) suggested, "'Let's do a pirate story!'"

"We all love pirates," he adds. "Maybe we like mean bullies; maybe it's that we like seeing bullies beaten, and that certainly happens. But you know, when I watch Treasure Island, I find myself cheering for Silver, as, at the end, he sails off with a little bit of treasure."

However, Smith, who has done his share of on-stage work over the years, says somehow he has never actually played a pirate: "I played Christopher Columbus once. Some people think that qualifies."

Weekend on 02/02/2017