When we got our schedule for Beauty and the Beast, one engagement stuck out as being unusual to say the least: two weeks in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Now I had played Fayetteville before with The Wizard of Oz, and while Fayetteville is a fun little college town I just could not see how Beauty and the Beast would sell two weeks worth of performances. Even worse it was in the summer so most of the college students were not in Fayetteville. But after Dallas we hopped on a bus and headed north to see what awaited us.
Well in terms of the show, it was not a sell out hit. The presenter did a curtain speech every night and talked up the fact that having a show for two weeks was a first for the Walton Arts Center. I wonder if they will ever repeat the experiment?
As for the extracirricular side of being in Fayetteville for two weeks, it turned out to be great. With our run in Hawaii coming ever closer, we all took advantage of the fantastic gym that the Arts Center arranged for us to use. Fayetteville also has miles of bike trails, and the gym just happened to rent bikes. My crowning acheivement was the day that I did RPM spinning class at the gym and then rode several miles on the trails! Also while it was not the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at, our hotel had a great pool so there were a great many calories burned in Fayetteville.
Our hotel was in Downtown Fayetteville which as it turns out was not such a bad place to be. There were many restaurants to chose from including our favorite, The Little Bread Company, above.
A view of Downtown from the campus.
With two weeks I had more time to explore the campus. By far my favorite discovery was The Center Of Excellence For Poultry Science. I mean, what?!
Now I can certainly think of other college towns I would like to have two weeks in (Bloomington or Madison to name but two), regardless I had a great two weeks in Fayetteville.
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