Becca Martin-Brown

Fans of Shakespeare know the story by heart. Separated by a shipwreck, Viola and her twin brother embark on a journey of disguise and deception, TheatreSquared describes their current production. That leads to a "tangled web of unrequited love," complete with the requisite music and swordplay.

"We have found our audiences love our cabarets because they don't know what is coming next," says Lexie Edmunds, who is directing "Broadway Through the Ages" March 14-16 for the Theatre Collective of Northwest Arkansas. "If you go and see a popular musical or straight play, they may know the next song or next act. With our cabarets, there's that element of surprise that we love so much."

The Arts One Presents production of "The Sound of Music" will "highlight the music, singers, and musicians by placing the focus on them instead of traditional scenery, set, costumes and props."

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was not famous in her lifetime. She did not win the Nobel Prize, although her name was being considered before her untimely death in 1921. Neither is it vital to this story that we understand how her revolutionary conclusions about Cepheid stars gave astronomers a way to measure the universe.

"The cool thing about hiking is that even if you've hiked the same trail a thousand times before, it can be slightly different each time," said Chris Pistole, park interpreter at Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area near Rogers.

Her name was Sally.

Joplin Little Theatre is undeniably a classic. Born in 1939, it's a nonprofit with its own building -- the 240-seat Park Playhouse, which opened in July 1948 and was renovated in the 1990s. It draws audiences from Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma in addition to Missouri; and it's in the middle of its 2024-25 season.

"We organize our lives through story," said Richard Width. "It's one of the reasons art exists in all its forms -- theater, song, dance, film, visual art. Art presents existence ordered into story."

This story originally published on Nov. 19, 2024 in the news section of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is one of Becca Martin Brown’s top stories of the year.

Executive Director Anne Jackson sees a trio of very specific niches for Arts One Presents. Born out of the legacy of Springdale's Arts Center of the Ozarks, AOP's "projects are the mechanisms we use to provide opportunities for local talent to be creative, mentor the next generation of theater community and production technicians, and provide high-quality theater experiences for audiences."