Houston Hughes
Photo by Marc F. Henning
College Night “Le Carnaval des Couleurs” event on Saturday, April 5, 2014, at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.
To live in Northwest Arkansas is to understand what it is to be stuck between mid-size-city amenities and small-town comfort. What joy to be able to indulge our most base desires—retail chains in which to submerge in seas of kipple, and bars packed to street-spill with distorted guitar riffs and skinny jeans—and then drive 15 minutes on any road but the interstate and find a nature sanctuary in which to rest before diving back into the muck! But this dichotomy comes at a price —namely, an ache for urban culture, but a lack of sufficient local do-ers and pay-ers to bring big-city dreams to fruition. We are just large enough to cultivate great local entertainers, but not large enough to ensure those entertainers gather the audiences they deserve.
It’s that problem which we attempt to fix with the Last Saturday Variety Show by bringing together multiple under-served art forms to create a fast-paced, free event. On any given night, you’ll catch bellydancers, jugglers, acrobats, comedians, musicians, magicians, poets—each of them bringing a small segment of our audience in—and each audience member in turn discovering new acts they may never have run across otherwise. And we slowly build up a regular audience too; one that has a reputation for being attentive and supportive, and for rewarding great performances. The hope is that by consistently giving performers a new audience, and giving the audience new art, audiences will cross-pollinate and result in ever-larger followings for local artists.
Crystal Bridges is working to solve the same problem, though from a different angle. The beauty of the Museum is that it exists to serve not Northwest Arkansas as it is, but as it could be (and eventually will be). It is a cornucopia of potential overflowing with possibilities, a lighthouse on the beachhead of culture, beckoning Arkansas to risk traversing the unknown waters between here and there. And, thanks to their continued efforts to connect with the local arts community, Crystal Bridges managed to link up with Last Saturday and work together to create the next step forward: a show with the variety and local arts focus you’ll find every Last Saturday in Fayetteville, but the stage and support necessary to make everything more grand, to give the huge talent we have the huge stage and huge audiences it deserves.
Photo by Marc F. Henning
College Night “Le Carnaval des Couleurs” event on Saturday, April 5, 2014, at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.
— Houston Hughes
The Finale of the Poetry Lift-Off Series highlights these local acts: Juggology : Juggling Cabaret Fayetteville: Aerials, magic, acrobatics Orenda: Bellydance Silvershakers: music band Poets: Doug Shields, Stormy Sky, Chris Helms, Audrey Lebert, Piper Sage, Kaia Hodo, Cleo Faulkner, Molly Sroges, and Houston Hughes.