Roll With The Punches

Bob Stevenson has been training all summer for a once-in-a-lifetime fight. He'll step into the ring, so to speak, this weekend with Kenneth T. Vestrin, a New York professional -- actor, that is. The two play Macbeth and Banquo in a new adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy, reset in the world of boxing.

"It works amazingly well," Stevenson says with his usual enthusiasm. "All the thanes are the different title holders, Duncan is ringleader (pun!) -- sort of the Don King or Vince McMahon type character. Lady M is the social climber ala the Kardashians. But of course all of this with Shakespeare's trademark tragic flair of, you know, killing everyone."

A summer production at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, where Stevenson is head of the theater department, comes around every three years or so, created by "a combination of professional actors, local community actors, alumni, faculty and current students."

"It's good for me to act for a number of reasons," Stevenson says. "First, I love it, and second, it keeps me current so I can talk to my actors from first-hand experience -- not as somebody who used to act. And, too, I have a list of roles I just want to accomplish -- so if no one has offered it to me, I just make it happen."

Stevenson comes from a professional background in television, film and stage and was working out west when a former UAFS chancellor asked him to come start a drama program at the school. That was 15 years ago, and along the way, he's earned a reputation for innovative and cutting-edge theater. As far as he knows, he says, no one has set "Macbeth" in the boxing world. But he was looking for a way to make the play more relevant than the "geopolitical" treatise it often becomes.

"How can we make this play not awful?" Stevenson says he mused. "It's interesting on the surface, with witches and murder and intrigue. So what is analogous? What do you fight for? They were just restarting the 'Rocky' franchise when I was thinking about it, so I'm sure that influenced me. In boxing or MMA fighting you fight for a title or crown. I just started working on the script and came up with enough to get started."

Stevenson says he cut the 86-page script he began with down to 51 pages, reducing the story to the heart of "one man's tragic journey, his pursuit of power at all costs and what it ends up costing him," he says. "If it didn't directly move the plotline forward, I got rid of it."

Then he started training and, with the help of another fight choreographer, creating the six "rounds" of combat in the show.

"I have been in the gym every day, all day, for the last eight weeks," he says, then adds, "OK, not that bad, but it seems like it!" He's been punching on the heavy bag, skipping rope and working out until "I'm dragging my arms out of bed every day," he says. But the actual rehearsal? Two full weeks and part of this one, with the show opening last night. Vestrin didn't arrive until Monday, but Stevenson says "he just walked on stage and did the role."

The show is another way Stevenson tries to get his students ready for life in the theater, film and television, a world he says is quickly merging into one.

"There are certain types of shows they have to do, but I don't want to just cookie-cutter churn them out," he says.

NAN What's Up on 07/29/2016