This Bard’s for you
Shakespeare Theatre starts new season with three of his best.
Thanks to the recent financial problems with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, faith in long-standing theater operations might be hard to summon. However, the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, operating out of Conway’s University of Central Arkansas, which formed in December 2006, offers no current worries. The company has spent each summer since performing a small handful of William Shakespeare’s plays along with a rotating list of recognizable musicals. And 2018 will be no exception.
Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre’s new season bows on Friday with his The Winter’s Tale, performed outdoors on the lawn of McAlister Hall at UCA, and then joined, in repertoire through July 8 onstage at UCA’s Reynolds Performance Hall by the musical My Fair Lady (opens June 15); Henry IV, Part I (opens June 22); and a family adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (opens June 28).
As usual, the collaborative effort involved in bringing four
separate shows to life is substantial. The Theatre’s main cast includes 29 performers with a youth ensemble that adds another 15. Add stage managers, directors, designers, crew and more to the list and this simple summer company begins to resemble a small village that pops up and then disappears in two months.
One of the new residents in the artistic village this year is actor Thom Miller. Miller, as with many of his fellow performers, is taking on substantial roles in three of the four shows — King Henry in Henry IV, Part I; Polixenes in The Winter’s Tale; and the irascible Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
The actor’s normal process is to inhabit one role at a time. Miller and quite a few of his fellow actors don’t have that luxury.
“Mostly for me it’s a challenge for my brain,” he says. “Three different characters — it’s sort of like patting your head and rubbing your belly. My day of rehearsal is divided up between the shows. Just today I found myself speaking about my lines in The Winter’s Tale while slipping into a British accent.”
Miller is on loan from Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., where he teaches voice and dialect.
“I knew of the [Arkansas Shakespeare Festival] by reputation,” he says. “Because of my work at the university, I need to show that I am active in my field, but it’s not do or die. I wanted to come here. I heard such good things about Arkansas.”
The actor credits a small bit in a Velveteen Rabbit production when he was a seventh-grader that put him on a permanent acting/performing path.
“We worked out this small bit on stage where I was tickled behind the ear and I thumped my foot,” Miller recalls. “That small bit got a lot of laughs. I noticed. I thought, ‘Oh, I like this.’”
As with so many actors, Miller spent time plying his trade in New York. He moved on to the academic side and the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre is providing him with a different kind of student-teacher experience.
“I am having extraordinarily good time working on King Henry in rehearsals,” he says. “I taught the gentlemen who happens to be playing Prince Hal, the son of King Henry. In fact, the first thing I assigned to him in class was this Prince Hal monologue from this show. My character is not proud of his son, but I am, of course, immensely proud of this student. That makes for an interesting moment to work through.”
Actors working for Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre get a little bit of free time — a single day out of an otherwise packed week. Miller isn’t going to let that time go to waste.
“I have never been to Arkansas,” he notes. “I want to do the Clinton [Library]. I want to do this interesting ice cream shop — Loblolly. I’ve been taking notes from everybody that lives here. You have to take off on the one day that we have. Your brain and spirit need the time, and I will take it.”
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Audience members who are Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre regulars would certainly recognize the striking presence of Conway’s own Paige Reynolds, a tall brunette who has taken the stage here for 11 of the troupe’s 12 seasons.
“My first year on stage was the theater’s second season,” she says. “So, yes, I was here when Matt Chiorini was the artistic director.”
Reynolds’ resume is filled with Shakespeare’s notable female characters, including Lady Macbeth and Othello’s Desdemona. This year she will play Hermione in The Winter’s Tale as well as two roles, Glendower and Vernon, normally assigned to men, for Henry IV, Part I. She also has a role in My Fair Lady.
“For me, one of the most exciting things about working on more than one play at the same time is how many
possibilities it opens up in casting, and how that allows actors to expand and diversify the kinds of roles they can explore,” she explains.
Reynolds is that rare thing incentral Arkansas — a working actress — in months in between stints at the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre. She has performed at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and Murry’s Dinner Playhouse; originated the title role in the Argenta Community Theater’s premiere production of Mrs. Miniver; and does voice work. She’s also in the process of turning her experience playing Shakespeare’s women into a book. She won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council for creative nonfiction; the work she submitted will be published by Bloomsbury’s The Arden Shakespeare.
Taking on the queen in The Winter’s Tale is an especially sweet task for Reynolds.
“One thing I love about Hermione is how many times she says the word “grace” — I think this tale is invested in grace, the kind that
washes over wrongdoings and mistakes and messes in a way that makes survival possible,” she says. “There’s something life-giving about that kind of grace. She’s a remarkably strong mother, and I think that’s one thing strong mothers can do. Shakespeare doesn’t give us all that many mothers in his plays, and I’ve wanted to explore this one for a while.”
Having a close-up view of the theater festival as it has established itself, Reynolds attributes its longevity to the “passion” of fellow company members as well as the patrons.
She doesn’t forget to give some of the credit to Shakespeare.
“When it comes to words of beauty and truth, Shakespeare wrote some of the best, and they aren’t ever going to go out of fashion,” Reynolds says. “I think it’s sort of magical that the farther away we get from Shakespeare’s day, the more astonishing his plays seem in how relevant and moving they are.”