Performing arts and music opportunities are growing in Northwest Arkansas, and quite literally so.
Construction of a permanent music venue in Rogers began late last year after businesswoman and philanthropist Johnelle Hunt donated land to the Walton Arts Center. The Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion, scheduled for an early June opening, is being built just off Interstate 540 near its interchange with Promenade Boulevard.
Performing Arts Organizations in Northwest Arkansas
Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra — formed in 2010 and uses the Arend Arts Center at Bentonville High School as its home. The orchestra has a community-minded focus, often including local ensembles and performers in its concerts.
Arkansas Winds Community Concert Band — the all-volunteer band was founded in 1988. The group performs at various venues around the Northwest Arkansas area.
Arts Center of the Ozarks — This downtown Springdale-based organization hosts a main stage series alongside children’s programming and visual arts installations. A series of renovations to the 40-plus-year-old facility is underway.
Arts Live Theatre — The nonprofit organization produces shows that feature children from kindergarten through the 12th grade. The nearly 30-year-old organization moved to a refurbished facility on Fayetteville’s west side in 2010.
NorthWest Arkansas Community College Theatre Department — The department recently offered a production of Lois Lowry’s “The Giver.” It typically produces two shows per year at White Auditorium on the college’s Bentonville campus.
Phunbags — A short-form comedy improvisational troupe that presents live comedy in the vein of the former television show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” The group has a monthly comedy and music showcase at the Dickson Theater in Fayetteville and also routinely performs at corporate events.
Rogers Little Theater — Housed in the historic Victory Theater in downtown Rogers, the troupe produces several theatrical shows per year. In recent years, the company has expanded the number of shows and hosted the premiere of a play by nationally known playwright Oren Safdie.
Singing Men of Arkansas — The group first performed live in February 2008. The all-male choir performs throughout Northwest Arkansas and later this spring will play a few dates in Texas and Oklahoma.
Symphony of Northwest Arkansas — A partner organization of the Walton Arts Center, SoNA performs symphonic works five times per year inside the venue’s Baum Walker Hall.
TheatreSquared — The company will conclude its eighth season later this summer with the Arkansas New Play Festival. Other shows in the professional theater company’s season included Arkansas debuts of award-winning plays. TheatreSquared operates as a partner organization to the Walton Arts Center.
Trike Theatre — Another of the Walton Arts Center’s partner organizations, Trike Theatre specializes in children’s theater, particularly for younger children. Trike Theatre produced the popular “Digging Up Arkansas” show which traveled the state with a history lesson for students.
University Theatre — The University of Arkansas drama department attracts students from across the country and produces several shows each academic year. Students take the stage in the University of Arkansas’ Fine Arts Center, where public performances of the shows take place.
The $10 million project combines funding from the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, a $3 million interest-free loan from Hunt and $2.5 million from Walmart, which earned naming rights through that transaction.
The 7,000-seat performance space provides a permanent home for a venue that originated as a tent-covered structure in the Northwest Arkansas Mall parking lot before moving to the Washington County Fairgrounds for the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
The Walton Arts Center purchased the venue in February 2011. Terri Trotter, chief operating officer for the center, cited a Walton Family Foundation study that named an outdoor music amphitheater as the quality-of-life amenity most needed in Northwest Arkansas.
"The answer is community need and desire. We knew there was a hole in that programming," Trotter said.
The Walton Arts Center's main location in Fayetteville will also see an upgrade. Fayetteville voters in November approved a bond extension measure that will give the center $6.9 million for a renovation of the 20-plus-year-old facility. The number of seats available at the venue on Dickson Street will likely remain very similar to its current configuration of 1,201. But backstage areas and the front facade will receive an overhaul as part of a project with a total cost of $23 million. More than 85 percent of voters approved the extension of the bond measure.
"It was a real endorsement of the project," Trotter said.
She said the plan to overhaul the existing facility is through the design development stage. The next move will be to find a temporary home for the center's business personnel, who will loose their current office space to demolition. The project should be completed by summer 2015, Trotter said.
Even as the Fayetteville renovation happens, center officials continue to consider a second campus in Benton County.
"That's really our vision for the future," Trotter said. No location has been named.
The larger venues will allow organizations to attract larger acts, said Brian Crowne, general manager for the music pavilion. The most recent incarnation of the Arkansas Music Pavilion did not support some larger act's stage production equipment.
By basing the technical specifications of the new venue on previously existing concert venues, the facility being constructed in Rogers can support "any tour that's traveling on the road right now," Crowne said.
The hunt for venues in the area continues for smaller theater organizations. Erika Wilhite of Artists Laboratory Theatre has staged productions in downtown alleyways, warehouses and a fort constructed out of bed sheets.
"There's nothing here for small- to mid-sized venues," she said. Through necessity, Wilhite and other producers have found opportunities in unconventional spaces, but she argues that a 100-seat black box-style theater could serve many positive purposes for the area's performing arts scene.
"We just lack space, and we have all these things to be done," she said.
NW News on 03/23/2014