A preview scene from the University of Central Arkansas College of Fine Arts and Communication-commissioned opera, The Little Rock Nine, is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m.
The scene, to be performed by graduates of the UCA Department of Music at Reynolds Performance Hall, will kick off “An Evening with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Tania León: Turning History into Art.”
Gates is the historian and consultant for the opera. León, the composer, will be an artist in residence on campus Sept. 22-25.
“Sept. 25 is the date all nine students attended Central High for the first time in 1957,” said Dr. Gayle Seymour, associate dean of the UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication. “We are so honored to have the Arkansas preview of one scene from The Little Rock Nine opera at Reynolds on this milestone anniversary.”
Tickets, available at uca.edu/tickets, are $15 for the general public and $5 for students, children and the UCA community. Call UCA Ticket Central at 501 450-3265 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, or toll-free at 1-866-810-0012 or visit www.uca.edu/reynolds.
The event is part of the UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication’s commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the building of Little Rock Central High School in 1927 and the 60th anniversary of the desegregation crisis that occurred there in 1957 through the “Imagine If Buildings Could Talk: Mapping the History of Little Rock Central High School” project.
The 2011 brainchild of Dr. Rollin Potter, former dean of UCA’s College of Fine Arts and Communication, The Little Rock Nine will tell the story of the nine African-American students who, under the protection of the United States Army’s 101st Airborne Division, entered Little Rock Central High School, risking their lives to ensure future generations’ equal access to education.
“The United States Supreme Court, President Eisenhower and the Little Rock Nine changed American history in ways that are still evolving,” Potter said. “An historic court decision, an American hero in the White House and nine courageous young people moved the Civil Rights agenda front and center, forecasting 60 years of both progress and confrontation.”
The opera is scheduled to be completed next summer.
The story of the Little Rock Nine transfixed the nation in September 1957 as nine ordinary yet courageous African-American students entered the previously all-white Central High School under federal troop escort to obtain an equal education. With the help of television news, then in its infancy, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, the events commanded worldwide attention as Little Rock and the Nine came to symbolize the federal government’s commitment to eliminating separate systems of education for blacks and whites.
Set within the climate of fear that persisted in the South, the story contains classic opera heroes and villains, including the nine students and their families, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, civil rights pioneer Daisy L. Bates and Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, who called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the Nine from entering the school.
Gates and León worked on the project with Dr. Thulani Davis, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Afro-American Studies, who wrote the libretto.
The preview performance will feature UCA vocal graduates Nisheedah Dévré Golden (singing Elizabeth Eckford’s aria), Ronald W. Jensen-McDaniel (singing Jefferson Thomas’ aria), Candace Harris (singing Minnijean Brown’s aria), and Kendra Thomas (singing Melba Pattillo’s aria). The singers were auditioned and selected by Opera in the Rock’s artistic director Arlene Biebesheimer.
Following the preview and the lectures, Dr. Donna Lampkin Stephens, UCA associate professor of Journalism, will moderate a discussion with Gates and León. An audience Q&A will follow.
The Little Rock Nine opera commission is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund, Virginia B, Toulmin Foundation, Darragh Foundation, Dorothy Morris Foundation and UCA Sponsored Programs.
“Imagine If Buildings Could Talk: Mapping the History of Little Rock Central High School” is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, marking 51 years of excellence, and the National Park Service, celebrating its 101st birthday. Imagine Your Parks is a grant initiative from the NEA created in partnership with the NPS to support projects that use the arts to engage people with memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System.
This project is also generously funded by grants from the Mid-America Arts Alliance (Artistic Innovations Program) and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. Additional grant funding is provided by Mid-America Arts Alliance (Regional Touring Program) and the Arkansas Arts Council (Collaborative Support Program), an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Other funding sources include ACANSA, American Institute of Architects Arkansas Central Section, American Society of Interior Designers, City of Little Rock, Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Stella Boyle Smith Trust, UCA Academic Affairs, UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication, UCA College of Liberal Arts, UCA Department of Occupational Therapy, UCA Disability Resource Center, UCA Foundation, UCA Office of Institutional Diversity, UCA Public Appearances at Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA Sponsored Programs, UCA Student Services, Windgate Charitable Foundation, Inc., and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.
For more information, contact Seymour at 501-450-3295 or at gayles@uca.edu or visit uca.edu/cfac/central60/central60events/
The UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication includes the Departments of Art, Music, and Film, Theatre and Creative Writing, as well as the School of Communication. The college’s primary mission is the preparation of the next generation of artists, educators and communicators. For more information about CFAC, visit www.uca.edu/cfac or call 501-450-3293.
