After a four-year hiatus, due in smaller part to the covid-19 pandemic but more directly because of the rebuilding of what used to be the Arkansas Arts Center into the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the institution's Children's Theatre is back — in a new form but in its old space.
Although the museum is almost entirely new, the architects retained the original theater space, now relabeled as the Performing Arts Theatre.
It's not entirely untouched — the stage is in the same place, and out in the house are the same 350 seats, but they have been comfortably reupholstered in golden cloth.
"They're the best seats you can find," says Liz McMath, who is directing the premiere production, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show," which debuts Saturday.
The seats have been rearranged to provide new aisles — the seating arrangement used to involve just one big section — and with more space between rows and leveled seating for wheelchairs, both of which makes it easier to get in and out and provides better access for disabled patrons. The floor underneath those seats has new carpet.
Patrons will probably also notice that the walls are now framed with wooden slats that mirror the decor in the museum's central space, and that the theater has a new grand drape.
Above and around the stage, those patrons might, or might not, notice that the sound in the space has undergone an upgrade — it has been acoustically balanced for the first time. The lighting features new "top of the line and really beautiful" LED instruments. There have been modernizing modifications to the fly lines. Backstage, the dressing rooms have been rearranged.
For the actors, says Verda Davenport, a longtime veteran of the area's theater as a performer and costumer and a member of the "Hungry Caterpillar" cast, "It really feels like home."
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The Children's Theatre itself is also undergoing a makeover. For decades, its focus has been almost entirely on shows produced, and very often written, within the Arts Center walls. This show is coming in from the outside.
"We're used to having an in-house playwright and starting from scratch," explains Erin Larkin, the museum's director of Children's Theatre and Performing Arts.
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show" will feature six local actors, but the production, onstage through May 28, comes from New York-based Rockefeller Productions, which provided the script adaptation, production design, lighting and costume plots. However, McMath says, "We build it."
The show takes four stories from children's author Eric Carle "from page to stage," according to a news release, using more than 75 life-size or larger-than-life puppets, which the production company also supplies.
In addition to the title one about the caterpillar, the others are "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," "10 Little Rubber Ducks" and "The Very Lonely Firefly."
Henceforth, Larkin says, you will probably see fewer mainstage Children's Theater productions, and those will appeal to broader audiences of "more diverse ages, past the third grade," which is where much of the programming focus has pretty much stopped in recent years. Audiences will see more of a mixture of "our own [shows]" and licensed productions such as this one.
However, she says, the theater stage will probably be busier through partnerships, including ones with Ballet Arkansas, which makes its museum debut with a program of "New Works" today and Saturday, and the Arkansas Cinema Society, which will offer its annual Filmland Festival and education programs there. There's also a concert series in the works, including a sold-out May 25 concert by Iris DeMent.
Also on tap: productions in the museum's new Glass Box, which opens out onto a terrace, a more flexible space in which the theater can create more experimental options.
Rockefeller Productions provides the puppets for "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show," which also includes Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "The Very Lonely Firefly." (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Andrew Werner)
There's one other change: The performance schedule has shifted from what used to be Friday night-Saturday and Sunday matinees to a Saturday morning show and matinee with a matinee on Sunday.
"No more Friday nights," McMath says.
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McMath started out at Children's Theatre as an actor and stage manager, and though she has directed a couple of episodes of Arkansas PBS' "Blueberry's Playhouse," this is her first mainstage directing job anywhere.
Puppetry, meanwhile has only recently become an aspect of the Children's Theatre here, introduced by former director and cast member Katie Campbell a half-dozen years before.
Davenport jokingly refers to working with puppets as "the bane of my existence."
She joins a cast that also includes Madison Courage Fleck, Keith Harper, Paige Carpenter, Chloe Clement and Brandon Nichols. Three of them will be onstage in each performance as actor-puppeteers while a fourth remains backstage handling tracking. Two of them are designated as understudies, but McMath promises that they "will definitely have a day they go on per week."
Rockefeller Productions provides the puppets for "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show," which also includes Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "The Very Lonely Firefly." (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Russ Rowland)
'The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show
10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through May 28. Debut of the new Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Childrens Theatre, 501 E. Ninth St., Little Rock. Local actor/puppeteers, with more than 75 larger-than-life puppets enact Rockefeller Productions adaptation of Eric Carles childrens classic plus three other Carle tales: "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," "10 Little Rubber Ducks" and "The Very Lonely Firefly."
Tickets: $20, $15 for museum members.
Performers Verda Davenport, Madison Courage Fleck, Keith Harper, Paige Carpenter, Chloe Clement and Brandon Nichols enact Eric Carle stories using puppets from New York City-based Rockefeller Productions in "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show," onstage Saturday-May 28 at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.