Fundraiser for The Rep’s Young Artists Program with Brighton Collectables

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Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s

SUMMER MUSICAL THEATRE INTENSIVE

Start your summer on a high note with friends, shopping, entertainment, and a party!

Friends of Young Artists at The Rep,

You are invited for aBrighton Ecard private party at the Brighton Collectables store in Midtown Little Rock (203 N. University Ave. Little Rock, AR 72205) this Sunday, June 2nd, from 5:00-7:00pm. You will need to bring a copy of this email invitation to get into this private event. To RSVP please email guild officer, Pamela McKinnis, at pkmckinnis@jmoutdoors.com. All patrons, friends, and supporters of The Rep are invited.

There will be refreshments and special performancesBrighton Ecard Invitation (3) by Mark Binns and several SMTI alumni! The Young Artist Guild and SMTI will receive 20% of all sales during this party. (It’s never too early to start your Christmas shopping!) In addition to the contributions from the party, for each Independence Charm Holder Bracelet and Americana I.D. Bracelet sold from May 24th through July 31st, 2013, at Brighton Collectables in Midtown Little Rock, the company will contribute 50% of the retail cost to support young artists at The Rep. 

Please stop by and show your support for the young artists at The Rep! We look forward to seeing you there!

How Puppets Became the Hottest Ticket on Broadway

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An earnest, recent college graduate with no sense of direction, Princeton is a fresh-faced fellow looking for his purpose in life.

An earnest, recent college graduate with no sense of direction, Princeton is a fresh-faced fellow looking for his purpose in life.

Avenue Q songwriters Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez coincidentally met in a subway station in New York City one day before beginning classes at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. The duo began writing music and created one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history.

In an effort to create a musical that would interest audiences who were not usually captivated by musicals, Marx and Lopez set out to write an entirely unique project. After months of kicking around ideas, they stumbled upon a concept perfect for 20-something audiences.

The idea was to take entertainment and surround it in a familiar medium, like Sesame Street. This “Friends” meets Sesame Street approach to musical theatre allowed Marx and Lopez to write songs that spoke to the obstacles young audiences face, like navigating life after college, relationship problems, paying rent and finding a life outside your apartment.

In May of 2000 at the York Theatre, Marx and Lopez held the first reading of Avenue Q for potential producers. Among the audience members were Robyn Goodman, producer of “One Life to Live,” and Kevin McCollum and Jeff Seller, the producers of Rent. All three were impressed with the fresh take on approaching the adult themes and ideas through a children’s television format: puppets. Goodman, McCollum and Seller signed on the project immediately.

In August of 2001, Marx and Lopez hired young actor-turned playwright Jeff Whitty to create a storyline for each of the characters. After many revisions, Avenue Q ran Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre from March through May, 2003.

On July 31, 2003, Avenue Q opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre. Nominated for six Tony’s in 2004, Avenue Q won three Tony’s including Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical and beat Wicked for Best Musical, evenutally becoming one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history.

Photo by John David Pittman. © Copyright 2013 Arkansas Repertory Theatre. All rights reserved. Avenue Q has not been authorized or approved by the Jim Henson Company or Sesame Workshop, which have no responsibility for its content.

The Man Behind “Death of a Salesman”, Arthur Miller

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American Playwright Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller, The Playwright

Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City, to his  Jewish parents, Isidore and Augusta Miller. Arthur lived a comfortable middle class life until age fourteen when the Great Depression struck and his family’s business failed. In high school,Arthur was more actively involved in football and other sports than in his studies. After several rejected applications, Miller was finally admitted to the University of Michigan in 1934, where he studied journalism, economics and history.  It was also in college that Miller discovered his love for play writing and in his junior year, he won $250 in a college play writing contest. Miller graduated from college in 1938 with a   degree in English. In 1940 Miller married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery.

 During World War II, Miller worked on ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and wrote plays for the Columbia Broadcasting System. In 1944, he received his first theatrical break when his play The Man Who Had All the Luck was staged on Broadway. Unfortunately it was not well received. At age 30, Miller  decided to give play writing one last try and diligently spent the next two years writing the play All My Sons, that was co-produced by stage and film director Elia Kazan, who helped him focus and polish the work. All My Sons enjoyed a profitable run of 328 performances and won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and inspired Miller to carry on with his play writing. But it was with Death of a Salesman that Miller’s reputation as an outstanding play wright was solidified. With Death of a Salesman, Miller became famous. However despite his remarkable success, he  continued to focus his writing on the struggles of the common person—social, economic, political, and personal. In the 1940s and 1950s, the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States created a mood of fear and suspicion. In particular, political, social, and business leaders were increasingly concerned that  communism threatened the American “way of life.” 

Herbert Block, who signed his work “Herblock”, coined the term “McCarthyism” in this cartoon in The Washington Post

In 1950 Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), whose mission it was to uncover forces that would subvert this American way of life, started focusing on the intellectual and artisticcommunity in order to find potential communist influences. HUAC targeted both Miller and director Kazan. Citing artistic freedom as his rationale, he refused to cooperate with HUAC that he believed was censoring the critical voice of the American people. Miller was found guilty of contempt of Congress but this was later repealed on account that he had not been informed adequately of the risks involved in incurring contempt. Miller’s  response to the anti-Communist fear and hysteria was The Crucible, where he merged the terror tactics of McCarthyism with the Salem witch hunts of the 17th century.  The Crucible which premiered on Broadway in 1953, became Miller’s most frequently produced play, staged every week somewhere in the world for the past 40 years. It was dramatized on television and in 1996, he adapted the script to a screenplay and the movie was released with his son-in-law, academy award winning  actor, Daniel Day Lewis starring as John Proctor.

“I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s way of mind. I wished to speak of the salesman most precisely as I felt about him, to give no part of that feeling away for the sake of any effect or any dramatic necessity.”

~Arthur Miller

 In 1956, Miller divorced his first wife Mary, and soon after married actress Marilyn Monroe. However this marriage was short-lived and Miller and Monroe divorced in 1961, a year before Monroe’s death due to drug overdose. Soon after his divorce, Miller met Inge Morath, a  Vienna-born photographer and they were married in February 1962. Miller and Morath spent 40 years together till her death in 2002. In the mid-60s, Miller focused on political activism, becoming the President of PEN, an international writer’s organizing of poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, and novelists. In 1968 he resumed play writing with The Price, a work about the two brothers who cannot overcome their anger with each other. The play enjoyed moderate success. In the 1970s, Miller wrote three plays: The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), TheAmerican Clock (1976), and The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977).

The productions of all three works were harshly criticized. During the 1980s,  Arthur Miller’s works experienced a worldwide revival. In 1983, Miller and his wife traveled to Beijing, China to see a production of Death of a Salesman.  Miller never quite enjoyed the success he had in the 40s and the 50s and his last few plays had very short runs on the stage. In his eighties, Miller kept writing social dramas, still driven by the desire to represent the wants, struggles, and frustration of common people. The characters in his plays act out human concerns that are universal. Miller called on his characters to take responsibility for their actions and act on the world that they live in; he rejected self-pity in his characters, no matter how dire their circumstance.

Arthur Miller passed away at the age of 89 on February 10, 2005, surrounded by his family. When he was  dying, he asked to be driven back from New York to New England, where he had written most of his plays. To mourn his death, lights were dimmed on Broadway. Source for this article: www.oldglobe.org

Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of Death of a Salesman will run April 26-May 12, 2013. To purchase tickets call (501) 378-0405 or visit www.therep.org

Article written by Werner Trieschmann

Announcing The Rep’s 38th Season!

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Season includes vibrant new artistic experiences, including two world premieres

Arkansas Repertory Theatre (The Rep), the state’s largest nonprofit professional theatre, is proud to announce its 38th MainStage Season. The new season will include vibrant new artistic experiences that exemplify The Rep’s mission of producing diverse work of the highest artistic standards for its Arkansas audience.

“We welcome you to experience a variety of bold plays, new artistic experiences and vivid stories that will engage and entertain in our most vibrant season yet,” says Bob Hupp, Producing Artistic Director at Arkansas Repertory Theatre.

THE 2013-2014 MAINSTAGE SEASON

PAL JOEY

Sept. 6 – Sept. 29, 2013

Taking the stage Sept. 6 – Sept. 29, 2013 is a re-conceived version of the Rodgers & Hart 1940 classic Pal Joey. After an enthusiastically received concert reading at Pasadena’s prestigious Boston Court Theatre last year, Director Peter Schneider was encouraged by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to move forward with a fully realized production.

With direction by Peter Schneider, a book by Patrick Pacheco based on the short stories and “Pal Joey” libretto by John O’Hara, and musical supervision and arrangements by Michael Reno, this new incarnation explodes with timeless jazz favorites, stunning tap dance numbers and plenty of sparkle while exploring morality, race, class and the timeless relationship between power and sex. The new score has been enhanced with other memorable songs from the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart catalogue.

Such classics as “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Sing for Your Supper,” and “Glad To Be Unhappy” are now intermingled with gems from the original 1940 show like “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “I Could Write a Book.” Also included is the song “What is a Man?” This Pal Joey answers that question in the most provocative and unexpected ways.

Peter Schneider is the Tony-Award-winning producer of the internationally acclaimed  Broadway musical, The Lion King, the director of Sister Act, The Musical in London and My Life with Men…and Other Animals, starring Maria Cassi. He produced the award-winning documentary, “Waking Sleeping Beauty,” about Disney Animation from 1984 – 1994, and served as President of Animation and Chairman of the Studio for the Walt Disney Company for 17 years.

“Arkansas Repertory Theatre is the perfect environment for the artistic collaborative process required to reinvent a musical,” says Schneider. “I am thrilled to partner with Arkansas Rep and Bob to present the world premiere of this exciting new version of Pal Joey.”

Joey has the voice of an angel and a devilish charisma. When the ambitious young black singer lands at a white Chicago nightclub in 1948, he intrigues the sassy chorus girls, the jazz-loving pianist and, most dangerously, a rich beautiful socialite. Hungry to headline at his own glittering club, Joey is willing to do whatever he can to get there.

“It’s exciting to introduce this classic American musical to our audience,” says Hupp. “Edgy for its time, Pal Joey is perhaps best known for the film version starring Frank Sinatra. Peter Schneider’s production breathes new life into this classic tale and brings new relevance to the story that unfolds amidst this powerful score.”

RED

Oct. 25 – Nov. 10, 2013

In partnership with the Arkansas Arts Center’s upcoming exhibit “Mark Rothko in the 1940’s: The Decisive Decade,” we are thrilled to announce the production of the revealing Rothko bio-drama Red, on stage Oct. 25 – Nov. 10, 2013.

Directed by Rep Producing Artistic Director Robert Hupp, Red will star Rep favorite Joe Graves (Othello, The Tempest, Of Mice and Men, Moonlight and Magnolias) as the abstract artist Mark Rothko.

Written by John Logan and set in Rothko’s studio on the Bowery, Red drops you squarely inside the world of the painter and sets your heart pounding, chronicling the tormented artist’s two-year struggle to complete a lucrative set of murals for Manhattan’s exclusive Four Seasons restaurant. This production provides a rare glimpse of an artist through the lens of his relationship with his naïve young assistant, who must choose between appeasing his mentor—and changing the course of art history.

Amid the swiftly changing cultural tide of the late 1950s, Red is a startling snapshot of a brilliant artist at the height of his fame. When his new assistant challenges his artistic integrity, Rothko must confront his own demons or be crushed by the ever-changing art world he helped create.

“The Rep’s first-time partnership with the Arkansas Arts Center offers a depth of artistic exploration never before offered to Little Rock audiences,” says Hupp.

BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE

Dec. 6 – Dec. 29, 2013

A world premiere musical brings a Tony Award-winning creative team to Little Rock this holiday season. On stage Dec. 6 – Dec. 29, 2013, Because of Winn Dixie, with book and lyrics by Nell Benjamin and music by Duncan Sheik, is a new musical based on the popular 2000 novel by Kate DeCamillo.

Taran, an Irish Wolfhound (pictured below), has been cast in the title role of “Winn-Dixie,” trained by Broadway’s foremost animal trainer, Bill Berloni. This will be the first pre-Broadway musical starring a live dog as the central character.

This unique production will include music by Duncan Sheik (Tony and Grammy Award Winner for Spring Awakening), lyrics and book by Nell Benjamin (Tony Nominee for Legally Blonde), direction by John Tartaglia (Tony Nominee for Avenue Q) and animal direction by Bill Berloni (a 2011 Tony Honor recipient).

“It has always amazed me the reaction animals have on an audience,” says Berloni, “My theory is we all know anything onstage is an extension of reality. We love when actors go up on lines and become real. We love seeing two partners in real life play characters onstage. So when a dog or cat comes onstage, our collective reality is ‘Wait a minute, you can’t get an animal to act, what is it going to do?’ And it brings the audience closer into the piece. While you can create animals as main characters in film, it has never been tried onstage.”

Because of Winn Dixie tells the story of lonely young girl who moves to Florida with her father. She goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket and comes out with a large stray dog who helps her rekindle an almost lost relationship with her father.

“We were honored that the creative team of Winn Dixie approached us for this world premiere. I think this project has tremendous potential to introduce a significant new work into the American musical theatre canon,” says Hupp. “Duncan Sheik is my favorite contemporary Broadway composer and this story will melt your heart. It’s a departure from what we’ve been doing for the holidays these past few years, but the themes and family friendly nature of this new musical will be a cause of celebration for the theatre and our patrons.”

CLYBOURNE PARK

Jan. 24 – Feb. 9, 2014

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and 2011 Tony Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a bitingly funny and fiercely provocative new play about the volatile combination of race and real estate.

On stage in the new year from Jan. 24 – Feb. 9, 2014, written by Bruce Norris and directed by Rep founder Cliff Baker, this ferociously sharp play is inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s popular classic A Raisin in the Sun.

Clybourne Park portrays fictional events set before and after the Hansberry play and is loosely based on historical events. In 1959, a white couple sells their home to a black family (the Younger family from A Raisin in the Sun), causing an uproar in their middle-class neighborhood.

Fifty years later in 2009, the same house is changing hands again, but the stakes have changed. As neighbors wage a hilarious and pitched battle over territory and legacy, Clybourne Park reveals just how far our ideas about race and gentrification have evolved.

When our houses become our homes, and our neighborhoods become our identities, what will we do to protect them? As hidden agendas unfold, an unforgettable story is revealed without good guys or bad guys, just real people with real concerns about the future of their community.

“The impact of this play is immediately relevant to our lives in Little Rock. This is a play about neighborhoods and identity. I never thought real estate could be the subject of life changing drama, but after seeing Clybourne Park a few years ago, I knew it belonged on The Rep stage,” says Hupp. “Its searing wit, intriguing plot twists and hard hitting social commentary make Clybourne Park a theatrical tour de force not to be missed.”

LES MISERABLES

March 7 – March 30, 2014

A co-production with Arizona’s Phoenix Theatre, Les Miserables returns to The Rep stage March 7 – March 30, 2014, directed by Rep Producing Artistic Director Robert Hupp and featuring an all new set design.

The Rep is pleased to announce the return of Douglas Webster to The Rep stage as Jean Valjean in the world’s longest-running musical, Les Miserables, seen by over 60 million people in 42 countries and now an Academy Award-winning major motion picture.

Les Miserables features music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, an English-language libretto by Herbert Kretzmer and is based on the novel of the same name by French poet and playwright Victor Hugo.

Discover a nation in the grip of revolution, where convict Jean Valjean is on the run. Hunted relentlessly by the policeman Javert for breaking his parole, he must leave his past behind and keep his vow to raise the young orphaned Cosette. But with revolution in the air and Javert closing in, Jean Valjean has no choice but to fight for his life and sacrifice everything to protect the people he loves.

This legendary production of Boublil and Schönberg’s classic sweeps its audience through an epic tale of passion and destruction in 19th century France. “The recent film illustrates that star power is no substitute for vocal power, or the emotional connection of experiencing the epic Les Miserables on The Rep’s intimate stage,” says Hupp.

THE SECOND CITY

April 21 – May 4, 2014

The Second City Touring Company loads up the tour bus and heads to Little Rock April 21 – May 4, 2014. Hilarious, fast-paced and always topical, and highly interactive with priceless audience interactions, The Second City has audiences rolling in the aisles all across the country. No institution escapes the satiric eye of The Second City – from the blowhards of the Beltway to the Hollywood elite.

“From John Belushi to Tina Fey to Stephen Colbert, The Second City alumni define comedy in America,” says Hupp. “You’ll want to be the first to check out the rising new stars on their all-new tour.”

THE COMPLEAT WRKS OF WLM SHKSPR ABRIDGED

June 6 – June 22, 2014

Life is short. The complete works of Shakespeare are long. Now all of the bard’s most familiar pieces are condensed into one hilarious roller-coaster spoof. Ending The Rep’s season is an entertaining romp on stage June 6 – June 22, 2014, as audiences will see all of Shakespeare 37 plays in only 97 minutes.

Directed by Rep Director of Education and Resident Director Nicole Capri, The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) is a parody of the 37 plays written by William Shakespeare, with all of them being performed in shortened, and side-splitting, form.

The play was written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, former founding members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and first performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987 and later played at the Criterion Theatre in London, where it ran for nine record-breaking years.

It has become one of the world’s most popular shows, playing frequently in a variety of languages. The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) is most notable for holding the (self-proclaimed) world record for the shortest-ever performance of Hamlet, clocking in at just 43 seconds.

EDUCATIONAL WORK AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

In addition to The Rep’s MainStage productions, educational work and community partnerships fill The Rep’s calendar.

The extremely popular Summer Musical Theatre Intensive (SMTI) workshops for young artists will be held July 7 – July 20, 2013. SMTI, under the direction of Nicole Capri, The Rep’s Resident Director and Director of Education, is an intensive, audition-based theatre training program designed exclusively for motivated young artists who are serious about the arts and musical theatre.

From equity-card carrying actors living and working in New York, to LA where graduates are pursuing film careers as actors, writers and film-makers, to Nashville where they are recording artists and video stars, to national and international tours, teachers, choreographers, directors and even a third SMTI finalist on American Idol, the most talented young artists in the state have made The Rep’s Young Artists Program a success.

“SMTI has experienced tremendous growth and success over the past eight years,” says Capri. “Our fan-base has grown by leaps and bounds and our alumni graduates have gone on to pursue successful careers as working professionals in the performing, visual and creative arts.”

Now Capri is taking the program in another direction, and plans to create a brand new, all-original musical with a life potential beyond Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s stage. The goal for the original musical is to produce a diverse and “culture-current” musical score and soundtrack that could be heard on any radio station across the country, to introduce new songs from almost every genre of music (contemporary-alternative, acoustic-folk, urban-rock, indie-pop, jazz-fusion, Nashville-sound, progressive-Broadway and sunshine-pop) and to develop a relevant and relatable original project.

Young artists ages 16 – 23 selected for the program will workshop the original production from July 7 – July 20 and perform their show on July 20. Ages 10 – 15 will workshop from July 21 – August 3 and take the stage on August 3.

“This does mean no fall SMTI Mainstage production,” says Capri. “The creative team, comprised of myself, Bobby Banister, Conly Basham, Mark Binns, Sam Clark, Robert Frost, Jimmy Landfair and Charity Vance, will continue to work for an additional eight to ten months to revise and refine our product.”

Ballet Arkansas will return to The Rep stage in April 14 – April 20, 2014, and the Little Rock Film Festival will return to 601 Main Street in May 13 – May 18, 2014, with spring dates for the Arkansas New Play Fest at the Oxford American Magazine’s Main Street venue to be announced at a later date.

SEASON SUBSCRIPTIONS

Advance Season Subscriptions are on sale now and will range from $180 – $260 through March 31, making subscribing to The Rep the best way to get the best seats at the best price ahead of sellout shows. Subscription pricing will go up in April. Single ticket sales open to the public in August.

Call The Rep’s Box Office at (501) 378-0405 for more information on Season Subscriptions or visit www.therep.org.

Treasure Island: More Than Just a “Boy’s Book”

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Robert Louis Stevenson

Although conceived with a juvenile audience in mind, Treasure Island was not truly a “boys’ book.”

Serious adult readers admired the work, including Stevenson’s friend, early modernist author and literary theorist Henry James, who declared that “Treasure Island will surely become—it must already have become and will remain—a classic.”

Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone was reported to have stayed up all night to finish it, prompting Stevenson, who was no fan of the politician, to comment that he “would do better to attend to the imperial affairs of England.”

Stevenson did not, of course, write the first book about pirates and buried treasure. His historical and fictional influences were numerous.

“I care not a jot.”

A major source of information (and disinformation) on the so-called “Golden Age of Piracy,” Captain Charles Johnson’s “General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates” appeared in 1724.

Stevenson acknowledged his literary debts to Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” for Silver’s parrot; Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” for the skeleton; Frederick Marryat’s “Masterman Ready” for the stockade; Charles Kingsley’s “At Last” for the ‘Dead Man’s Chest’; and Washington Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller” for the scenes of Billy Bones at the Admiral Benbow.

Regarding his borrowing from these “useful writers,” the author declared: “I care not a jot.” In Treasure Island, Stevenson was consciously creating something new from familiar material, and he transcended his sources and shattered stereotypes.

World Premiere of New Musical set for March

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Set to a thrilling musical score and full of action, adventure and excitement, Treasure Island, A New Musical offers a fresh take on the famous story by Robert Louis Stevenson in its World Premiere on The Rep stage in March.

Rep audiences will be the first to see this production, created by Brett Smock, Carla Vitale and Corinne Aquilina and featuring set design by Stanley Meyer (Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), a Broadway and Tony-award winning cast (Wicked, The Addams Family, Billy Elliot, Dreamgirls) and The Rep’s own Rafael Castanera as costume designer after his amazing work on The Wiz and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Bored by his mundane life at the Admiral Benbow Inn, and entranced by the mysterious Captain Billy Bones and his wild seafaring tales, young Jim Hawkins yearns for a life of adventure. His wish is soon granted as members of the infamous Captain Flint crew pursue Bones and his hidden treasure map.

When Bones dies in a struggle for the map, Jim narrowly escapes with his life and Bones’ prize possession. With a sturdy crew in place led by Long John Silver, and with Jim under the protection of a doctor, a nobleman and a stoic ship’s captain, they set sail in search of their fortunes. As greed escalates, mutiny threatens and loyalties are forever broken.

As both pirates and crew battle to discover the coveted Isle of Treasure, the camps arrive where “X” marks the spot. Will they find the treasure? And if so, at what cost? Little Rock audiences will be the first to find out when this World Premiere production opens on The Rep stage. Visit www.therep.org for tickets.

Discovering Gee’s Bend: A Place Within a Play

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Gee’s Bend, Alabama is located in Wilcox County and is surrounded on three sides by a dramatic U-turn in the Alabama River. The approximately 700 residents are almost all descendants of the slaves of the original Gee’s Bend plantation.

Boykin, also known as Gee’s Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama.

This geographic isolation and unusual stability of community created a unique enclave for the women’s art community: quilting. The history of Gee’s Bend is the story of a tiny place altered by large social changes occurring over the years.

Before the Civil War, Gee’s Bend was primarily a working cotton plantation, first controlled by slave owner Joseph Gee and then his nephews, who sold it to Mark Pettway. After the Civil War, the emancipated slaves took the last name of Pettway, and worked the same land as tenant farmers. In the 1930s the acreage was sold to the federal government, which in turn developed a program to enable them to purchase the land that they already cultivated.

Pettway plantation, April 1937. Photo by Arthur Rothstein.

The type of quilt making found in Gee’s Bend is of the African-American style. This style is considered unique among others found elsewhere in the United States. The most obvious reason for this is the overt African influence. The use of symbols, asymmetry, bright colors, and vertical piecing are techniques that hark back to African textile creations of years ago. Many of the symbols found in these quilts have also been traced back to religious symbols native to a multitude of African tribes. So although these quilts signify their personal pasts and hopes for a future, these women still respect the culture from which they originated.

Mary Lee Bendolph, one of the quilters who inspired the play Gee’s Bend. Photo credit internationalfolkart.org.

These quilts were not originally created as pieces of art—whether for wall hangings or theatrical inspiration. In fact, the quilts were made out of necessity. The very culture that these women were raised in taught them that everything had a use.

So when the nights became cold each winter, the women would scrounge what small scraps of fabric they could find and fashion a blanket to put on the beds of their children and themselves. The inspiration for this approach to construction came from the equally as innovative approach to housing insulation—using layers of paper found in newspapers or magazines.

These wonderful pieces of art were simply thought of as creative methods of keeping a family warm until 1966. It was then that these women realized that the magic and beauty of the quilts came more from what went into them rather than what came out.

Flying Geese variation, ca. 1935 by Annie E. Pettway.

It was a common practice in these small communities of quilt makers to “air out” their quilts every spring. For members of the community, this became a time to study other’s methods or designs so that they may have inspiration the next winter. However, in 1966, another set of eyes caught a glimpse of these soon to be masterpieces.

Gee’s Bend Quilt, April 2012, Gee’s Bend. Photo credit: “The Future of Gee’s Bend,” Deep South Magazine.

Father Francis Walter saw something more than function in these quilts. He saw a passion and a history unique to these people. Walter, a Civil Rights worker, proposed the idea of marketing and selling these quilts to stores in larger cities in the hopes that these women would soon become self-sufficient economically doing what they loved. Working in conjunction with many volunteers, he was able to get the quilts into the Smithsonian Institution. This exposed the work of these women to the world, but also inspired stores such as Sears, Bloomingdales, and Saks Fifth Ave. to sign contracts with them to manufacture and sell their designs.

In 2002, Houston’s noted Museum of Fine Arts held an exhibition of quilts created by over 30 residents of Alabama’s small community of Gee’s Bend. The exhibit, praised by The New York Times and others, brought world-wide attention to the otherwise hidden creative endeavors of the quilters of Gee’s Bend.

“The best of these designs, unusually minimalist and spare, are so eye-poppingly gorgeous that it’s hard to know how to begin to account for them. The results, not incidentally, turn out to be some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” - The New York Times

Art collector William Arnett, working on a history of African-American folk art in 1998, made the discovery when he came across a photograph of Annie Mae Young’s work-clothes quilt draped over a woodpile. He was so impressed by its originality, he set out to find it. Research lead Arnett and his son Matt to Young in Gee’s Bend and then they showed up at her door late one evening.

Young had burned some quilts the week before (smoke from burning cotton drives off mosquitoes), and at first she thought the quilt in the photograph had been among them. But the next day, she found it and offered it to Arnett for free. Arnett, however, insisted on writing her a check for a few thousand dollars for that quilt and several others. Soon the word spread through Gee’s Bend that there was a white man in town paying money for raggedy old quilts.

Work-Clothes Quilt ca. 2002 by Mary Lee Bendolph.

Arnett shared his discovery with Peter Marzio of the Museum of Fine Arts. The attention to the exhibition revived what had been a dying art in Gee’s Bend. In 2006, the Smithsonian magazine reported that some of the quilters, who had given in to age and arthritis, were back quilting again. And many of their children and grandchildren, some of whom had moved away from Gee’s Bend, had taken up quilting themselves.

Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective, Gee’s Bend. Photo credit: “The Future of Gee’s Bend,” Deep South Magazine.

With the help of Arnett and the Tinwood Alliance (a nonprofit organization that he and his four sons formed in 2002), fifty local women founded the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective in 2003 to market their quilts, some of which had sold for more than $20,000.

The play Gee’s Bend was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers Project, where it received a staged reading in 2006 and premiered in January 2007. Even though the story is loosely based on the life of Mary Lee Bendolph, the play focuses on the community of Gee’s Bend as well. Like most artists, the women of Gee’s Bend looked to their surroundings to inspire their designs and were influenced by those around them.

Watch as Director Gilbert McCauley discusses discovering Gee’s Bend and the impact it has in telling this story. Woman on Pettway Plantation, Gees Bend, 1937. Photo by Arthur Rothstein.

“The story of Gee’s Bend is tied to Gee’s Bend only; it’s a special place filled with special people who may appear mundane on the surface, but beneath they are as textured as the very quilts they make,” says Rep Dramaturg Adewunmi Oke. “The costumes, the set and the props will reflect not only the people, but also the place of Gee’s Bend both literally and metaphorically.”

Watch as Dramaturg Adewunmi Oke discusses the lessons audiences will take away from this true story. Monica Parks as mother Alice, Nambi E. Kelley as Sadie and Shannon Lamb as sister Nella in Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of Gee’s Bend.

Gee’s Bend opens on The Rep stage January 25 and runs through February 10, 2013, supported and sponsored by The Design Group, Philander Smith College, Arora, Delta Airlines and the Little Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

The Rep’s production of Gee’s Bend is made possible in part by a grant from the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame Foundation, a component fund of the Arkansas Community Fund.

Gee’s Bend Weaves Stories Behind Quilts

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Monica Parks as Alice, Shannon Lamb as Nella and Nambi E. Kelley as Sadie in Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of Gee’s Bend. Photography by Cindy Momchilov, Camera Work. © Copyright 2013 Arkansas Repertory Theatre. All rights reserved.

Gee’s Bend, written by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, follows Sadie Pettway and her family, sister Nella and mother Alice, as they turn to quilting to provide comfort and creative expression to their lives. What begins as a labor of love soon turns into a spiritual and artistic awakening.

Pieced together from discarded clothes and seasoned with laughter and tears, the women sew a patchwork of inventive abstract designs in rich, blazing colors. Stitch by stitch, the stories of these strong women are revealed as their experiences unravel and inspire them to create what the New York Times called “miraculous works of modern art.”

Gee’s Bend opens in 1939, with the beginning of the era of African-American land ownership. The story then advances to 1965, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement and the historic visit to Gee’s Bend by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The production concludes in 2002, on the eve of the unveiling of “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

“Gee’s Bend has received a great response from audiences across the country. Regardless of age, race or geography, people are able to connect with these women on some level,” Wilder has said about the play. “People are always telling me stories about their experience with an old family quilt, or about the women in their family. There is something universal about the story.”

The quilts that have become iconic art were created as thrifty necessities, pieced together from old clothing and material scraps to provide warmth. According to the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective website, “The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African-American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present.”

Those same quilts became a much-needed source of income for the women of Gee’s Bend in the 1960s, when an Episcopal priest helped the women sell their quilts to high-end stores like Bloomingdale’s. In 2002, a national exhibition tour was organized, and in 2007 the legacy of the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend was complete with the debut of Wilder’s play.

Gee’s Bend was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers Project, where it received a staged reading in 2006 and premiered in January 2007. A graduate of the dramatic writing program at New York University, Wilder received the American Theatre Critics Association’s 2008 Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright.

When Wilder interviewed the women of Gee’s Bend, she asked many questions about the women’s personal lives, and which stories she should reveal. Quilter Mary Lee Bendolph reportedly said to her, “Just write it honest.” Wilder promised to do so, saying, “I just hope my love for these women and these stories can be seen in the work.”

Even though the story is loosely based on the life of Bendolph, the play focuses on the community of Gee’s Bend as well. Like most artists, the women of Gee’s Bend looked to their surroundings to inspire their designs and were influenced by those around them.

“Gee’s Bend is the place that allows the play to happen,” says Director Gilbert McCauley. “And our set will be evocative of that…Gee’s Bend was isolated by a river. So this is a story of a woman who has to make a crossing from the known into the unknown, and the only things she has are the pieces of her life, which she turns into quilts.”

“The story of Gee’s Bend is tied to Gee’s Bend only; it’s a special place filled with special people who may appear mundane on the surface, but beneath they are as textured as the very quilts they make,” says Dramaturg Adewunmi Oke. “The costumes, the set and the props will reflect not only the people, but also the place of Gee’s Bend both literally and metaphorically.”

The true story of the women of Gee’s Bend has already touched millions who viewed their stunning work through a national exhibition tour and features on National Public Radio, in Newsweek and Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine. “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others

But McCauley says this is not a play about quilts, but about people, a fact Wilder was careful to point out in her production notes. “While the quilts are the metaphor, the women are the focus,” says McCauley. “The women of Gee’s Bend wrote their stories through their quilts—their blood, sweat, and tears—these quilts hold the fabric of their lives.”

Gee’s Bend opens January 25 and runs through February 10, 2013, supported and sponsored by The Design Group, Philander Smith College, Arora, Delta Airlines and the Little Rock Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

The Rep’s production of Gee’s Bend is made possible in part by a grant from the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame Foundation, a component fund of the Arkansas Community Fund.

SMTI Audition Dates Announced for 2013

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Cast members from The Rep’s SMTI program perform in Singin’ on a Star, July 2012.

Audition dates for Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s 2013 Summer Musical Theatre Intensive (SMTI) will be held on Friday, March 1 and Saturday March 2 at Arkansas Repertory Theatre, 601 Main Street, Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Callbacks will be held on Sunday, March 3.

Candidates will be asked to prepare a one-minute monologue and 16 bars of a song (an accompanist will be provided). Those auditioning may also be asked to return for an additional movement and callback audition on Sunday, March 3.

Tuition for the program is $575. A limited number of need-based scholarships are available to those who qualify. Applications will be available at the time of audition.

SMTI alum Mary Katelin Ward on getting her start in the program

Appointments will be scheduled between 4:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Friday, March 1 and between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 2. Callbacks will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 3. Applicants will be notified by mail of acceptance within three weeks of auditions.

Audition appointments will be scheduled starting January 15, 2013. To schedule an audition appointment, email education@therep.org with your name, age/grade, email, phone number and mailing address, and please include your preferred audition day. Audition appointments will be scheduled by email only.

The Senior SMTI Session (Ages 15 – 23) will be held from July 7 – July 20 with final performances on July 20. The Junior SMTI Session (Ages 10 – 14) will be held from July 21 – August 3 with final performances on August 3.

SMTI alum Zach Graham on his experience in the program

The Summer Musical Theater Intensive, under the direction of Nicole Capri, Rep Resident Director and Director of Education, is an intensive, audition-based theatre training program designed exclusively for motivated young artists who are serious about the arts and musical theatre. For two weeks during the summer, aspiring Young Artists will have the opportunity to work with the SMTI staff that is comprised of professional directors, choreographers, musicians and designers.

Daily rehearsals are structured similarly to a professional summer stock experience and include instruction in musical theatre techniques, multi-media, costume and stage make-up, dance and vocal coaching. Each session involves intensive daily rehearsals culminating in a public workshop performance of a selected musical or musical revue on the Arkansas Repertory Theatre MainStage.

For more information about The Rep’s Summer Musical Theatre Intensive program, visit www.therep.org/learn.                

Share the Gift this Holiday

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Students applaud Avery Clark after a matinee performance of Henry V in September 2012.

What’s your favorite production at The Rep? If you’re like many of us, you probably have several favorites.

Did you know The Rep’s Student Matinee Program allows thousands of school children from across the state to see those same performances for as little as $8 a seat? The impact of live theatre on these students is truly inspiring.

Here’s a comment from a history teacher about our program:

“The Rep can teach more in two hours than I am able to teach in weeks. The stories are so enthralling and the acting so superb, my kids walk away grasping hard topics such as racism (A Raisin in the Sun), compassion (To Kill a Mockingbird), empathy (The Elephant Man), and revenge (Hamlet).”

A teacher from a small school in rural Arkansas shared this with us:

“Over 75% of our students are on free or reduced lunch, so the affordable student matinee prices are essential. Every year, some of our seniors become the first high school graduates in their family and for several of our students, Arkansas Rep is their first experience of live theatre beyond the school play.”

Will you help us continue this program by supporting this important cause? Your donation of $50 will help a student attend a matinee performance. Your donation of $100 would help pay for two students to attend. And a donation of $1,500 or more could pay for an entire classroom.

Please consider sharing your love of live theatre with students across Arkansas by making a donation to our Student Matinee program. On behalf of our artists and staff, thank you for your consideration and your continued support!

Kind regards,

Robert Hupp, Producting Artistic Director
Arkansas Repertory Theatre