Kyle Kellams: For the final Wednesday in January, and it is time to talk with Becca Martin Brown for our series of conversations we call “The Other Way”. Becca, how's your January so far?
Becca Martin Brown: I want to go the other way, right down the street to the airport, onto a plane, to somewhere warm. How about that? Can we do that today? Well, as I said to you before we went on the air, I have socks on with my Crocs.
Kellams: And that is an indicator that it's too cold.
Brown: But we have some great news to talk about. You know, many of us in northwest Arkansas have been waiting for some word about what's going on with Arkansas Public Theatre. And we have some news.
Kellams: Are we going to talk to someone about this news?
Brown: We are. We're going to talk to Rusty Turner, who is not the current board chair, but the most recent board chair who's been involved in all of this news.
Kellams: Well, let's give him a call. And we have reached Rusty Turner. Rusty, how are you, sir?
Rusty Turner: I'm doing great, Kyle. How are you?
Kellams: Very good. I have Becca Martin Brown with me.
Brown: So we just teased our audience, our listeners, with the idea that APT has some big news. Would you like to tell them what it is?
Turner: Sure. We have been working, as our patrons know and the public knows, Arkansas Public Theatre has been shut down since December of 2020 for us. And as a result of the tornado that came through northwest Arkansas and damaged the Victory Theater, our home, and we did a few shows off site until the end of 2024. And then we just haven't been able to, from a financial standpoint, been able to mount shows since then. While we're waiting for the Victory to be repaired.
What the board has been doing in the meantime has been working on our own rehearsal facility and storage facility, a building where we can use anytime we want for rehearsals, for workshops, for storage, just as a home base. And that building is now complete and open and we're ready to use it. We call it the Arkansas Public Theatre Annex, and it's just north of Rogers on Tucks Chapel Road. And we're excited to let people know that it's there and ready to go. And it will be a great benefit to Arkansas Public Theatre when we get started with productions again here, we hope, in the next couple of months.
Brown: So people who don't do theater might not understand why it's so important to have a rehearsal facility that, in this case, has a stage the exact size of the Victory Theater stage.
Turner: We've always had at Arkansas Public Theatre, even when we were managing Victory Theater full time and using it pretty much exclusively. We still had problems with rehearsal conflicts, shows that kind of overlapped. And so we were always, in some ways, looking for additional rehearsal areas while one show is closing and we're starting another one, and that's always been a bit of a problem.
When the city took over management of the building in 2023, that drastically limited the amount of time we could be in the Victory for rehearsals. And it made rehearsing for our shows and getting ready for our shows much, much more difficult. And so the annex will solve that problem immediately. And so we can rehearse there. We can build sets there. We can do all sorts of things, do all the preparation we need to do. And so when we actually get into the theater, into the Victory, to mount our shows and produce them, we will have had no problems finding rehearsal space and the accurate rehearsal space that we've needed. And that was a real challenge for us in those shows we did at the Victory in 2023 and 2024.
Kellams: All right. You're saying hopefully in a couple of months you get geared back up. How do you approach the next full season when it happens? Will you look at some of the shows that you were unable to put on, or are you just going to go a whole new slate, or has that even been a conversation yet?
Turner: Oh yeah, we've been talking about it. We've been meeting with the city of Rogers here the last few weeks, and we are zeroing in on a launch date when they believe the Victory is going to be open. We're not quite at liberty yet to say what that date is, but it is the city's belief and our hope that we will be able to perform or have our first show back in the Victory at the end of the second quarter of 2026, or the beginning of the third quarter of 2026. So we're talking a June, July window here. And, our plan is right now is to schedule a full season starting with that June or July window. So we'll plan six shows starting June and July going on into 2027, complete with what the show titles are, what the dates are, when rehearsals will begin, when auditions are, all of that. We intend to roll out all at once for those six shows once we have the exact dates when we know we can be on the stage at the Victory.
And to answer the second part of your question, Kyle. Yeah, we'll look at some of the shows that we ended up having to cancel because of the tornado. But we'll also be looking for new shows, shows that have just become available for community theater. And we just want a good balance of shows. It's going to be heavy on musicals, because musicals, for one thing, draw very well. And I think musicals are really the heart and soul of community theater. There are a lot of great non-musical plays that we can do. And we do intend to do some straight plays, but. But I anticipate our season will be pretty heavy on musicals, because that really is, I think, the most attractive kind of product for a community theater audience.
Brown: And I feel like even though we know he wouldn't particularly like it, I feel like we should talk about the gentleman who made this annex possible.
Turner: You're exactly right. And we, the entire theater community, not just Arkansas Public Theatre, but the entire theater community owes Jim LeFevre a huge debt of gratitude. He's a member of our board. He's our facilities committee chair at Arkansas Public Theatre. And this annex has been his idea for many years. He has helped plan it. He's helped execute it. He helped us find the company to construct the building, Multi-Craft Contractors, whom Jim works for. He's been the guiding light of this entire project. He's also provided a substantial amount of the funding for this building. We will also be conducting a capital campaign to shore things up and make sure that we've got what we need to get to to roll our season out and get started again. But Jim's been just a huge benefactor to us and we would not have this building and we would not be in the position we're in without Jim. I should also add to that we have this building free and clear. There's no debt. We will be able to use that building for as long as we need it.
Kellams: You know, you mentioned the tornado, and that scuttled a season. But there was also the remodeling. So it's been a while with few shows. What does that mean for actors and cast and crew when you've kind of had a couple of years of few productions?
Turner: We really need to do a lot of work here in the next few weeks, letting our patrons and our volunteers and our cast members know that we're back and that we're, we've got a season of shows that we think they're going to want to participate in. We need to cultivate those relationships. Fortunately, there have been some good opportunities for people to do community theater in the interim. But there has been a big hole in that, over the years because APT hasn't been there. We would do six shows a year at six opportunities for people to audition and to perform. We're going to be back to play our part in the community theatre world. So we'll be working hard, getting the word out, letting people know that we're back and letting people know that, that we're going to have some shows that they're going to be interested in participating in either as cast members or as backstage help, or as patrons and audience members.
Brown: And so you can read more about this Sunday in the profile section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Because, you know, I'm everywhere. And what website? Rusty, can people find more about this?
Turner: ArkansasPublicTheatre.org is our website, and we'll be updating it with information about what's going on as soon as we have those firm dates in mind. I can tell you we're actively looking at show titles right now. As soon as we get some firm dates from the city, we'll be able to make some announcements about auditions, what the shows are, rehearsal dates, show dates, all those sorts of things. We've gotten pretty good at restarting after COVID and then after the first renovation and now after the tornado, you know, we're going to perfect this relaunch thing at some point.
Kellams: I would tell you, break a leg, but I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm just going to say go forward.
Turner: Well, we intend to go forward. Our board has worked really, really hard to make sure that this happens. We really really needed this facility. And it's really going to make things kind of secure our future for a long time so that we can continue to play our role in the community theater world and in the arts world in northwest Arkansas altogether.
Kellams: Rusty Turner with Arkansas Public Theatre. Thank you for your time. Becca, always great to talk with you.
Brown: Thank you all.
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