Arts Live Theatre kicks off its 41st season with "I Don't Want to Talk About It," a play about teen challenges running September 11-14, followed by "The Real Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in October. The company also offers eight-week classes starting September 8 for students ages 4-18, featuring themes from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood to Harry Potter and a new radio podcast theater class for teens. Ozarks at Large's Kyle Kellams speaks with education director Julie Gable about the upcoming season.
Kyle Kellams: Arts Live Theatre’s 41st season is here. The company, totally children- and youth-dedicated, offers productions, classes and special events throughout the year. This new season is already underway with rehearsals for "I Don’t Want to Talk About It", a play about the challenges of being a teen right now. Julie Gabel, education director of Arts Live Theatre, said 'I Don’t Want to Talk About It' will be on stage Sept. 11 through 14, and then will be followed quickly by The Real Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Julie Gabel: Which is a great story. I love that. And then our musical for this year, or this fall, is Beetlejuice Junior. And that goes up the first week or so of December.
Kellams: I mean, it seems like as soon as one is struck, the other is underway. Maybe even there’s some overlap.
Gabel: There’s a little bit of overlap sometimes. And when we do that, we will have either alternate rehearsal spaces or we have two spaces in Arts Live where we can do a little bit at the same time.”
Kellams: There are also a lot of classes.
Gabel: We have so many great classes this fall, and they start the week of Sept. 8 and run for eight weeks. We serve young students starting at 4 years old, and we go up through high school to 18. This year we’ve got fun themes such as Lilo & Stitch. We’ve got Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood for the itty bitties — for the 4- and 5-year-olds — a Roald Dahl story called The Twits. We’ve got a class of The Twits. Of course we normally do a Harry Potter-centered class because it’s still so popular and kids love it and we love it. This fall we have one called Hogwarts: The Saga Continues. We’re going to also do Charlotte’s Web, a Superman class, a How to Train Your Dragon class — which is always fun. There’s a film coming out, or it may have already come out.
Kellams: I think it’s been out.
Gabel: Yeah, come out.And then something fun that may interest you. I was about to say we’re doing a radio podcast theater class. This is for our teenagers. And Mark Smith, our executive director, is so good with podcasts and that sort of thing, and such a good playwright, that this is an opportunity for some of our young people to experience podcasting and then what radio theater used to be.
Kellams: Tell me what a Hogwarts class — what does that feel like over the eight weeks?
Gabel: So Jennifer Nesbitt-Eck, who is our office manager and development director at Arts Live Theatre, she is a Harry Potter aficionado, if you will, and she has written some wonderful scripts for our young people. What they normally are is these young people are enveloped in the world of Harry Potter. And it may be that they’re all wizards and they’re all learning from a master. It may be that they are on a journey or that they are playing the — what’s it called? Quidditch? — or whatever they might be doing. But she is so knowledgeable about all of this that she puts them in that world, and they are learning theatre, and they’re also learning a lot about and able to express their inner wizardry.
Kellams: You could be a young person and really not interested in being on stage ever, because that’s a whole different thing, but still take these classes.
Gabel: Absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up because so much of it is just about play. We’re coming in and we’re learning how to play together. And these themes are usually something that would draw someone in — 'Oh, I really love Charlotte’s Web'. And so that way they’re involved in the world of the farm and Fern and Wilbur and Charlotte. But it may be that they don’t particularly want to act on stage. They want to play the theater games and they want to learn all of this. But it may not be their number one goal to be on stage. Which is great, because when it comes to production time, when we do shows, there’s always so much to do backstage. We have so many wonderful Arts Live kids who don’t particularly want to be on stage, but they want to help backstage. We have people that run lights, run sound, are moving props and set pieces and are backstage helping with costume changes and that sort of thing.
Kellams: Auditions for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are coming up.
Gabel: They are on Sept. 6, and the production opens Oct. 9 at Arts Live Theatre. Before that, though, we’ve got I Don’t Want to Talk About It, which opens on Sept. 11. So we’ve got a show opening in September, one in October and then our musical early December.
Kellams: Don’t give anything away, but you know, if you have The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on stage, you kind of got to have a Headless Horseman, right?
Gabel: One would hope. One would hope.
Kellams: One would hope. Julie, thanks.
Gabel: Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate it.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
