KAT WILSON
LAURA SHATKUS Spearheading experimental theater in Benton County.
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he last time this reporter spoke with Laura Shatkus, she was holed up in preparation for an adaptation of “1984” by Lookingglass Theater Artistic Director Andrew White. She included the following dispatch: “Just survived my first hurricane by sleeping inside a movie theatre inside a theatre-theatre in Florida. For my job. Life is an adventure!” It is, particularly if you’re an actor and the founder of the Northwest Arkansas-based theater group ArkansasStaged. The floating theater collective kicked off the year with an Inauguration Day reading of Lauren Gunderson’s “all-female political farce” (“The Taming”) and ended its 2017 lineup with a fully staged Halloween performance of “Empanada Loca,” a macabre take on the legend of Sweeney Todd starring Guadalupe Campos, with the occasion marked by specialty empanadas courtesy of famed chef Matt McClure of The Hive restaurant. Shatkus described the women at that “theatre-theatre in Florida,” The Hippodrome, as “scrappy, strong” and “badass,” and the Arkansas Times couldn’t help but think, upon hearing those words, that she must have fit right in. An aspiring English teacher who jumped ship on her career plans when she discovered she hated student teaching, Shatkus dove headlong into the Chicago acting world without any formal theater training — and actually managed to get work. For a whole decade, even. “I used to joke,” she said, “if somebody said something technical to me in a rehearsal, I would say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what that means. I didn’t go to theater school.’ Brought down the house.” Though her M.F.A. in acting from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville means she’s had to put that quip on the shelf,
Shatkus still embraces the idea of demystifying theater-speak in favor of connecting with an audience — and, despite the title of “artistic and managing director” that precedes her name these days, erring on the side of uncertainty. “I love saying, ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’ ” she said. “And giving people permission to say that, because this art form is totally collaborative.” Collaboration is exactly how ArkansasStaged got going — and how Shatkus ended up at its helm. The company was founded in 2013 by Sabrina Veroczi and Kris Stoker, and after founding a longform improv troupe, made up mostly by women and called 5 Months Pregnant, taking over ArkansasStaged was a natural fit for Shattkus. “In some ways, I was functioning as an artistic director of that little improv group, and I really liked it. And I was pretty good at it! So, when I graduated and started looking at my opportunities it wasn’t a strange fit to go, ‘Hey, here’s a company that has a little bit of some traction already, and a name. And I took over and I started doing the work.” That work includes stagings of “everything from Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary American plays to the poems of Baudelaire and the absurd musings of Gertrude Stein,” it says on the company’s 2018 season fundraising website. The ArkansasStaged performance of Lauren Gunderson’s aforementioned political farce (which generated $1,000 in proceeds for Planned Parenthood) opened at 21c Museum Hotel with a note from the playwright, who waived her royalties for any companies that would perform “The Taming” on President Trump’s Inauguration Day. It ended as follows: “Theatre isn’t supposed to be a safe place, it’s supposed to be a brave place,
so let’s be brave together.” As if in accordance with that mantra, ArkansasStaged has made the most of being without a brick-and-mortar performance space, transforming rooms at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and 21c into sites for George Brant’s “Grounded,” UA professor John Walch’s “Craving Gravy,” Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” and David Ives’ “Venus in Fur,” an erotic two-person comedy. “I’m very interested in telling stories that are not being told here,” Shatkus said. “Stories about women, very contemporary theater. Not to say that The Rep [the Arkansas Repertory Theatre] and TheaterSquared aren’t doing that, too, but maybe being independent means I can take more risks,” a couple of those, she said, being “Empanada Loca” and the S&M-heavy “Venus in Fur.” “It’s definitely an R-rated play,” Shatkus told me, “but some of my oldest patrons, who I was afraid were going to be horrified by it, were like: ‘That was the best play ever. I love that woman. Where is she? How can I tell her I love her?” For Shatkus and ArkansasStaged, who are devoted not only to producing plays that amplify and explore the stories and voices of women, but to doing so with a donation-based admission, it turns out that not being beholden to the trappings of a facility (or a board, or a historic legacy) comes with its own set of challenges, but also its own freedom. “I’m just adding to the conversation,” Shatkus said, “with my unique background of appreciation of theater in Chicago, appreciation of experimental theater, appreciation of site-specific theater — using the site to inform the play. And really just giving opportunities to wonderful people that I know are capable of doing the work.” A lot of what’s been done at ArkansasStaged, she said, was a matter of good timing. “Part of being a producer is seeing who should be put together, who makes sense together. How can you bring these forces together to make something good?” — Stephanie Smittle arktimes.com NOVEMBER 09, 2017
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