Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Each Life Touches Many
Arts Live presents ‘It’s A Wonderful Life, Right?’
I think everyone needs to know that they make a difference in so many people’s lives,” says Mark Landon Smith, executive director of Arts Live Theatre in Fayetteville. “They have no idea about how we touch people directly and indirectly.”
Just in time for the Christmas season, Smith adapted the beloved classic film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” for younger audiences. It will be on the Arts Live stage Dec. 8-11. The production will feature around 12 actors, ages 10-17.
“Instead of being set in Bedford Falls, like the original, we set it in Fayetteville. The lead character in the movie is George Bailey, [but] now she’s a 17-yearold high school senior; her name is Georgina Bailey,” Smith explains. Bailey longs to go to college and needs money for a study abroad program. However when a deposit goes missing at the coffee shop where she works, her plans for the future fall apart.
Like the movie, one missing deposit leaves her in despair.
“She has to repay that deposit and that causes this domino effect — she can’t study abroad, which means she can’t go to college, and all these things start falling apart. And she just wishes she had never been born. Then the angel comes in, and we see what her life would have been like if she had not been born and what a difference she made in people’s lives,” Smith adds.
Just like the movie, Georgina gets a glimpse of what life would be like without her and even faces a bully — this time named Harry Potter — while coming to realize how important she is and how many lives she’s touched.
Younger audience members, especially teenagers, will be able to relate to the sense of pressure that Georgina feels in facing her future, but also the play reflects the dehumanization that comes along with modern technology.
“Kids feel isolated, even though they have all this information,” Smith says. “It’s not interactive information. It’s solo information — they can just get on their phones and their tablets or whatever. I think they lose touch with how much they touch other people’s lives because they don’t have that interaction like we used to when we were kids.”
Smith says he thinks adults will enjoy seeing the story though “a young person’s lens.”
“I think everyone can relate to how people have made a difference in all of our lives,” he says. “People have made a difference in my life that they didn’t know they were making a difference. I remember my third-grade teacher gave me a compliment, and I’m still living on that 50 years later. It was so significant.
“I think it’s important that we all be reminded that we are important. We are a very important piece of the puzzle of life.”