Kennedy Reynolds’ senior prom is Saturday night, but she won’t be there. While her classmates at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts are dance the night away at prom, Reynolds will be watching a different group perform at Reynolds Performance Hall at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
Central Arkansas Ballet and Red Curtain Theatre will be performing “Carnival of the Animals,” a humorous musical suite by French Romantic composer Camille-Saint-Saens written in 1886. The suite features several movements named after various animals.
What makes Saturday’s performance special for Reynolds is that it will also feature original poetry by her that will serve as the narration for each movement of the suite. It is the first time her written work will be featured in a performance hall, she said.
Reynolds’ mother, Kristen Sherman, is one of the production’s co-directors and a co-owner of Red Curtain Theatre, a community theater in Conway that offers workshops and several opportunities each year to perform in a production. When Red Curtain Theatre and Central Arkansas Ballet, a dance company also located in Conway, decided to have a joint performance of “Carnival of Animals,” Sherman asked her daughter to write the narration for the production.
“She knows I’m an English nerd at heart,” Reynolds said about her mother’s request. “I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty decent writer. At least the written word has always come naturally to me. It’s part of my personality.
“One of the first things I asked was, ‘Can I write it in iambic pentameter?’ She said sure even though she didn’t really know what I meant. I ended up not writing it in iambic pentameter, though. It didn’t sound right.”
Instead she took the time to listen to each movement to get a feeling of the music before writing the narration. Several of the pieces will be spoken over the music, so the timing had to work together.
This isn’t the first time poetry will be featured with a performance of the musical suite. In 1949, American poet Ogden Nash wrote poems for each movement. His poems often featured observations of the animals by people.
Reynolds took a different approach. Her poems are written from the viewpoint of the animals who are often making observations about the people they see.
“I thought it would be interesting to take a different perspective to see how animals view people, to have them comment on humans and the different things we do they think are strange,” she said.
One poem focuses on an ostrich watching people engrossed in their smartphones, so much so that they miss out what is going on around them. The ostrich comments about what a shame it is they are missing out on life but then immediately sticks its head in the ground.
Reynolds said she wrote the poetry for the production in two nights. She gave it to the production’s creative team, who asked only for a couple of minor tweaks.
Reynolds describes herself as a theater kid. She performed in her first show in the summer after fifth grade. Before that, she would be with her mother at the theater while Sherman attended college for a performance degree in Dallas.
“If she wasn’t in the production, she was the videographer for them or working backstage. We were in or around the theater all the time,” Reynolds said.
Once they moved back to Conway, her mother opened Red Curtain Theatre. “Ever since then, no one has been able to get me off the stage,” she said. The theater performances allowed her to build confidence in herself. Even when she was having what she considered a bad rehearsal, someone was there to pick up her spirits.
“It’s one of the reasons I do theater. They’re there for you. The camaraderie actors have with each other is amazing. Most of my best friends I met through theater,” she said.
This will be one of the few times she gets to see a show from the audience instead of being on stage. Rather than being nervous about the first performance of her work in public, Reynolds is excited about the opportunity — although she quickly adds, “I like going to shows, but not as much as being in them.”
Red Curtain Theatre and Central Arkansas Ballet will perform “Carnival of the Animals” at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 23, at Reynolds Performance Hall at UCA. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for children 10 and under. Tickets may be purchased at redcurtaintheatre.com or at the door on Saturday. For more information, call (501) 499-9776.