Steve Broadnax III’s energy is infectious. He beams pride and exudes excitement over Zoom as he discusses the next chapter of a career that has seen him go from an artist growing up in Little Rock, where he was first blown away by the work onstage at his local regional theatre, to a busy regional and Broadway director. Now Broadnax returns home as the newly named artistic director of Arkansas Repertory Theatre, uniting with executive director Will Trice and producing director (formerly interim artistic director) Ken-Matt Martin to create a triumvirate of Little Rockers, born and raised, at the helm of their hometown theatre as it undergoes a foundational shift to their production seasons. Safe to say, Broadnax’s enthusiasm about this homecoming is palpable.
“I grew up on The Rep!” Broadnax exclaimed. “That was my exposure to professional theatre. I grew up seeing all the shows, ushering so that I could get in for free.”
Broadnax’s career has taken him around the country as a freelance director, including his Broadway directorial debut, Thoughts of a Colored Man, in 2021. He’s directed premieres of works by Suzan-Lori Parks (Sally & Tom) and Katori Hall (The Hot Wing King), and he serves as co-head of Penn State University’s MFA directing program. But Broadnax said he couldn’t have imagined that one day he’d be in a leadership role at the theatre where he not only caught the theatre bug but where he got an early start as a performer: After graduating from undergrad at Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts, he was in the theatre’s 2004 production of Dreamgirls—a show, it turns out, attended by a high school student named Ken-Matt Martin.
“One of the first professional musicals I ever saw in my life was that production of Dreamgirls at Arkansas Rep,” Martin recalled. “I will literally never forget that iconic downbeat, when the snare comes in, and it’s Steve who came out in this all-white suit. It’s burned in my memory. To know that that human being is now leading that institution—I don’t know that there’s a better full-circle moment that exists out there.”
Broadnax has been no stranger to Arkansas Rep since those early-career days. He’s directed productions of Marie & Rosetta and Native Gardens and performed in Jitney, to name a few examples. In case it’s not clear how beloved Broadnax is in the community that’s welcoming him home (a community that includes Broadnax’s 97-year-old grandmother), last year Broadnax was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the arts.
“His immense talent and accomplishments are well known,” said Nikki Lovell, chair of the Rep’s board of directors, in a statement, “but it is his infectious personality and his enthusiasm and love for the Rep that impressed the board even more.”
The Rep, Broadnax said, was a foundation for all he’s gone on to achieve, so, when this opportunity arose, he jumped at the chance to head home. The opportunity felt right not least because of Arkansas Rep’s recent shift to summer seasons, with their first SummerStage season in 2024. The move from a traditional fall-to-spring season to summers allows Broadnax to continue teaching at Penn State, creating a pipeline for his students to work at the Rep, as one director will this coming summer, and to continue working throughout the country as a freelance director.
“It just fit,” Broadnax said. “I get to go home and give back to my community at a time when the Rep is really redefining itself. I get to be a part of that.”
As Trice recalled, the shift to summer seasons has been a journey since he joined the organization’s leadership in 2019 on the heels of a financially induced shutdown. The company was just starting to produce again when the pandemic hit. During the pandemic lockdown, Trice said they had to take a long, hard look at their expenses, making drastic cuts along the way. Eventually, Trice explained, the company (which had a budget of around $3 million as of 2023) reached an inflection point.
The thought is that this shift will make room for Arkansas Rep to increase their community education programming that had previously, as Trice put it, “been considered ancillary because we were always just going from show to show basically year-round.” Broadnax, who will write and direct the 2025 SummerStage season opener Me & the Devil, also sees this change as a chance for the Rep to stand out in a community where the theatre options have grown from just the Rep and the local dinner theatre that were around when he was younger. (Even nearby Fayetteville’s now 20-year-old TheatreSquared didn’t exist when Broadnax was growing up.) The hope, he explained, is that finding a new niche will help establish the theatre as a summer destination for new works to grow and top talent to take the stage.
“Our goal is to officially be the state’s theatre,” Broadnax said. “I want to be a beacon of possibility for people in my state—that you don’t have to be from New York City or D.C. or California in order to participate in the arts at a high, professional level.”
That hometown pride shone through in conversations with all of Arkansas Rep’s leadership, from Broadnax to Trice to Martin. To borrow a phrase from Martin, when it comes to the Rep, for the three of them, “all roads lead back to that place.” Nothing can replace the value added by having leaders from a theatre’s community, surrounded by family and friends, and acutely aware of the ways that that community has ebbed, flowed, and grown over the years.
“There’s nothing like knowledge that comes from being in your hometown,” added Trice. “Those connections can’t be replicated when you go into a new community. You can do your best to try to learn what makes them tick, but when you’re born of it, it’s just part of your DNA.”
That’s why Martin feels certain that folks around the city and state will be excited to see Broadnax return home.
“I’ve never been more excited and proud to see someone that I consider a mentor and who I hold in such high esteem step into this role at this moment in time where there is so much doom and gloom and bad news for our industry,” Martin said. “I’m just so grateful that someone with the kind of spirit of generosity, with the clarity of vision and with the deep, deep understanding of the city that he’s trying to serve and the legacy and history of this institution that he’s trying to serve, gets to step into this role.”
Looking ahead to his tenure, Broadnax said he wants to show folks from Arkansas and the South in general that there are great opportunities and chances for exposure in their region. He hopes his personal journey to Broadway and back again can serve as inspiration, allowing artists in the region to feel empowered, and to see working with Arkansas Rep as the first step of a journey that can go anywhere. After all, Broadnax said, it’s tough for folks to know who they are, or who they can be, until they see their reflection.
“That’s what regional theatres should do—reflect the community that they are a part of,” Broadnax said. “I hope people think that Steve, their very own, took his knowledge and experience and things I’m continuing to learn and brought them home to my community. I want this to be the mountaintop of the South.”
Jerald Raymond Pierce is the managing editor of American Theatre.
