2019 December Faulkner Lifestyle

the arts
Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre
The Bard Ball is February 1, 2020, and it starts at 7 pm,
onstage and backstage of Reynolds Performance Hall.
Bard Ball
2020 will be
an exciting
night, as AST alum
and Broadway
performer De’Lon
Grant returns to
Conway as the
featured performer
for the annual
fundraiser to benefit
AST’s 2020 season.
De’Lon starred in AST’s 2012 season
as Jim in Big River, thrilling audiences
with his powerful vocals in the classic
production based on Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In addition
to performing at Bard Ball, Grant will
conduct a workshop with UCA students as
an artist-in-residence, sponsored by UCA’s
College of Fine Arts and Communications.
Grant is an actor and singer currently
performing on Broadway in the Tony Award
nominated hit musical Come From Away.
He spent three years touring domestically
and internationally as Berry Belson in the
Tony Award winning musical Jersey Boys
and was recently named Best Leading Actor
at the 2017 IRNE Awards for his portrayal
of Haywood Patterson in Kander and Ebb’s
The Scottsboro Boys; a role for which he also
received an Elliot Norton Award Nomination.
Some of Grant’s other credits include:
Frederick Douglass in Douglass (The Wit
Theatre, Chicago, IL), Tod Clifton in Invisible
Man (The Studio Theatre, Washington,
DC and The Huntington Theatre, Boston,
MA), Jim in Big River (Lyric Stage Company,
Boston; Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre,
Conway, AR; The Barnstormers, Tamworth,
NH), Achilles in Troilus and Cressida
(Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Boston, MA),
Posthumous/Cloten in Cymbeline (Actors’
Shakespeare Project, Boston, MA), Gaspard
in A Tale of Two Cities (The Wheelock
Family Theatre, Boston, MA), Kaine in
Dessa Rose (The New Repertory Theatre,
Watertown, MA) and Sawyer in Harriet Jacobs
(Underground Railway Theatre, Boston,
MA). Grant holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts
in Acting from the University of Michigan
and a Masters in Music with concentration
in Musical Theatre Performance from The
Boston Conservatory of Music.
Please join us for this special evening with
De’Lon Grant. The emcee for the evening
will be AST alum Jess Pritchard, with Judge
Troy and Karla Braswell as co-chairs of the
event. Tickets and tables may be purchased
online at www.arkshakes.com or at the door.
For more information, please contact Mary
Ruth Marotte at 501-269-9428.
60 faulkner lifestyle | december 2O19