What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1074567
BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette Mike Thomas was 29 when he played the truck driver, Jason, in a February 1990 Ozark StageWorks production of "Valentines and Killer Chili." "I was really too young," says Thomas, who now teaches theater at Fayetteville High School, writes, acts and does comedy improv. "I needed more life experience." Thomas isn't appearing in the Smokehouse Players show that runs Feb. 8-9 — the first local production since 1990 — but it has prompted him to share memories of the experience 29 years ago with Fred Scarborough, who directed for Ozark StageWorks, and playwright Kent R. Brown, chairman of the University of Arkansas drama department from 1985 to 1993, who now lives in Greenville, S.C. The idea for "Valentines and Killer Chili" was born in Texas, while Brown was attending a theater conference there in the early 1980s, he recalls. He went into a restaurant carrying a yellow legal pad, and "a waitress approached, took my order and came back a few moments later with my coffee. We chatted a bit. And that was it." "She looked or talked nothing like Jackie," Brown remembers. "But she did pile her hair up high on her head. Bouffant-looking. As I waited for my food to arrive, I just began writing about a trucker who met a waitress on the road years before, all from Jason's point of view. … It was only when I gave Jackie the freedom to create her own life, and have her own story, that the play came to life." "At the time, I was a graduate student at the university," remembers Scarborough, who is now president of the Arkansas Children's Foundation. "I just wanted to tell stories. I was constantly in a show, planning a show, working on a show, looking for a show. I craved that collaboration." Scarborough cast Thomas alongside Leslie Irene Wells, also a UA alum. "Leslie connected with Jackie. Leslie's Jackie joked and flirted like she was the greatest thing since sliced bread, all the while very hurt from love lost. Mike was so believable as the good old boy trucker. His Jason wanted to connect, but … the road, the drive, the solitude were where he was most comfortable." "She loved theater and had a lot of natural talent," Thomas says of Wells, who died in December 2013. "She was vulnerable and strong, just like Jackie." The play was staged at Jerry's Diner, a Fayetteville institution at the corner of Dickson Street and College Avenue. "I wanted to do the play in a found space," says Scarborough, and "just asked if they'd consider letting us do it. They gave us a key and asked that we lock up at night. It was that easy." "Jerry's Diner gave us the atmosphere of a 'real' truckstop," Thomas remembers. "The wagon wheel light fixtures, the old wooden booths, the smells… Ozark StageWorks became known as the theater company that did plays in interesting places…" Full disclosure: I produced that version of "Valentines and Killer Chili" for Ozark StageWorks, and what I remember most was dragging all the furniture out of Jerry's Diner and around the corner to an old motel next door — and back — every night of the run! 4 WHAT'S UP! JANUARY 27-FEBRUARY 2, 2019 Mike Thomas and Leslie Wells played the trucker and the waitress in a 1990 production of "Valentines and Killer Chili" presented at Jerry's Diner in Fayetteville. 'Killer Chili' Revisited Playwright, director, actor remember 1990 production Photo courtesy Mike Thomas FAYETTEVILLE