Robert Hupp

Bob Hupp had been to Little Rock exactly one time, and that was a one-night stop in a touring production of “Hamlet” in 1983. And he wasn’t really looking for a job as a producing director, which is what Arkansas Repertory Theatre was seeking to fill when Cliff Baker decided to step down.

But as a veteran of regional theater, Hupp knew The Rep’s excellent reputation, so he told the headhunter firm with which he had been working that he wanted to be considered.

“Directing has been sort of the artistic part of my life and what I did when I was working in New York, but I also very much enjoy the business side, the producer’s side,” he said.

Nearly four years later, The Rep has enjoyed a consistent increase in revenue while reaffirming the theater group’s status inside and outside of the state.

Revenue in 2002 reached $2.65 million, Hupp said, a steady increase from $2.5 million in 2001 and $2.4 million in 2000.

The Rep also got “tremendous response” to a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” that played in Chicago for several months in late 2001 and early 2002, “and that was very gratifying,” Hupp said.

Taking shows to other cities “is not something we are going to do a lot of because it takes so much focus from the organization, and our job is to create work here in Arkansas.”

The next big thing for Hupp’s company is a production of “Romeo & Juliet” as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ new initiative called Shakespeare in the Community. The Rep is one of six theater groups in the country, and the only one in the South, selected for the NEA project.

“We were very pleased to be selected, and that’s a testament to our proven ability to take things to other places,” said Hupp, who will direct the production and take it to venues west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rockies beginning in April 2004.

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