LARA JO HIGHTOWER/Special to the Free Weekly
On June 2 and 3, a huge field on the outskirts of Prairie Grove will hold the largest selection of open-air flea market booths in the Northwest Arkansas area. From polished antiques to funky vintage treasures to rusty farm finds, shoppers should be rewarded with just about anything they’re looking for at the Junk Ranch, which boasts 150 vendors and more than 200 booths.
We asked a few vendors what they’re bringing to the event, how they got involved in junking, and what their best find ever was.
Don Wilkinson
Don Wilkinson found his way to junking the way a lot of vendors do: he kept finding great stuff while shopping for his own collection of vintage Speas Vinegar bottles. So when he retired in his mid-50s after 35 years with the Arkansas Highway Department, he threw his hat into the flea market ring and got a booth at one of the largest flea markets in the country in Canton, Texas. After 10 years of selling at Canton, he moved up to an even bigger venue — Round Top, Texas, the Holy Grail of flea markets.
“It was a lot of work on my part,” he says. “We would haul seven or eight trailer loads down between shows, store them, and then we’d go down and set up and stay two weeks, selling. We sold to people from everywhere — California and everywhere. They got to buying from me, and they actually got to buying too much. It became too much of a job, and age took over.”
Wilkinson is 85 now, and he was thrilled when the Junk Ranch opened up so near his home in Mountainburg. Though the main product he sells are chicken laying houses — he estimates he’s sold around 30,000 over the course of his junking career — the booth he runs with his son is an eclectic mix of auction, estate and farm sale finds.
Wilkinson’s best find ever was deceptively simple: a box full of old bottle caps.
“I told my wife, ‘I found the Holy Grail,’” he remembers. “They were unused, cork-lined Dr Pepper bottle caps from 1907. The first bottle caps ever used on a Dr Pepper bottle.”
When he put them on eBay, he says, “people went crazy.”
Stacey Murphy
The Weathered Pearl
Stacey Murphy’s relationship with the Junk Ranch started off as a shopper.
“I loved the eclectic mix of old, used, collectible items and the vendor inspired pieces! I thought to myself, ‘I could do this,’” she recalls. “I applied the next year, and junk has been my livelihood ever since.”
Murphy advises yard sale shoppers to look for the signs with a torn piece of cardboard with the word “sale” scribbled across it as a marker.
“Often these sales are not advertised on social media, so it increases your chances of finding a hidden treasure,” she says.
She also hits the widely advertised sales, like the Oklahoma 100-mile Yard Sale. That’s where she found her favorite find: a 13-foot late 1800s banquet table discovered in a barn in Cleveland, Okla.
“I have done several shows all over Oklahoma and Arkansas, and I would say what sets the Junk Ranch apart from the others is the venue itself, the friendly vendors, the amazing shoppers, but most of all how well [Junk Ranch founders] Amy [Daniels] and Julie [Speed] have it organized,” Murphy says.
Tracy Davis
Rusty Heart Relics
“I have always loved old things as long as I can remember,” says Tracy Davis of Rusty Heart Relics. “My mama had an eye for the ornate and passed it along to me. We spent many a weekend traveling the roads for that elusive treasure.”
For her booth, she stocks a wide variety of items.
“I love vintage and antique garden items, primitive and antique furniture, and holiday decor,” she says. “I loved MCM before it was cool.”
Her favorite find is an antique child’s bedroom suite she found at the famed Texas flea market Round Top.
“It is a beautiful faded robin’s egg blue with a painted design, and it’s to die for,” she says.
Davis has had a love affair with the Junk Ranch since the first year.
“From the live music and food trucks to the mountains of treasures and lovely vendors, I knew this was the show that I wanted to be a part of,” she says. “Amy and Julie are the best and treat us like family.”
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FAQ
Junk Ranch
WHEN — 9 a.m.-3 pm. June 2; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. June 3; tickets go on sale at 8 a.m.
WHERE — 11195 Centerpoint Church Road in Prairie Grove
COST — $10
INFO — thejunkranch.net
“I really think it’s going to be unlike any show that a TheatreSquared audience has ever seen,” says Dexter Singleton, director of T2’s new production, “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.”
When audiences walk into T2’s West Theatre and see that it’s been turned into a wrestling arena, they’re apt to agree.
The play made a huge splash with its Chicago debut in 2009 before later moving to an off-Broadway stage. It would become a Pulitzer Prize finalist and rack up a host of awards including winner of the 2008 National Latino Playwriting Award, an Obie Award for Best New American Play and the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award.
Singleton — whose dual passions of theater and sports are married in scripts like “Chad Deity” — is hopeful that this will be a play that will satisfy audiences from both of those spheres of entertainment.
“This is a great play to introduce people to theater, people who have never seen a play before,” he notes. “Because it’s not just a ‘sit there and be quiet’ type of play. You can yell, you can scream, you can do all of that and be engaged, just like you would be at a wrestling or another sporting event.”
Playwright Kristoffer Diaz’s incisive play uses outrageous wit, over-the-top theatrics, and flashy — and authentic — wrestling moves as satirical commentary on an industry rife with xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism. And he does it in a way that’s so entertaining, you might not recognize the message until you realize you’re still musing about the themes days later.
Actor Cedric Leiba Jr. is front and center as the weary, jaded wrestler Macedonio “Mace” Guerra. Describing himself as “the guy who loses to make the winners look good,” Guerra is ready for his turn in the spotlight as a champion within THE Wrestling, the organization he’s been involved in for decades. Despite the fact that his shot never seems to come, he’s too in love with the sport to walk away.
“He’s doing this job knowing that there are a lot of negative things — political things, racial things — that he has to go through, but he’s willing to go through them because he loves the sport so much,” says Leiba. “He loves the art form, the storytelling. In the play, we see what he goes through behind the scenes, and what he has to put up with. He’s fighting, not only for himself, but for all marginalized people. As he’s telling his story, we get exposed to the great things about wrestling, but also the negative aspects that most people don’t want to talk about.”
Diaz admits that Mace’s views on the sport are very close to his own.
“The secret of writing is that all characters are stand-ins for the writer at all times,” he says with a laugh. “You get to portray whatever sort of conflicted feelings you have about anything, about the world, by creating characters who think the same thing. Mace is definitely one of the two or three characters that I’ve ever written who is directly based on my emotions towards things — yes, professional wrestling, but also about the American theater, also about the American political system at the time, also about race. For me, pro wrestling was a super easy container for those things for me to write about, because it was my favorite thing for probably the first 15 years of my life, so you get to explore these complicated topics with something that you’re really passionate about.”
Singleton, who is T2’s director of New Play Development, is no stranger to the sports/theater mash-up: He directed T2’s popular production “The Royale,” a play inspired by the real-world boxer Jack Johnson who, as a black man at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the heavyweight champion of the world. (That show starred Shon Middlebrook, who returns to the T2 stage for “Chad Deity” in the title role.)
“I’m always fascinated with how plays and sports can merge, because they are just so theatrical in nature,” Singleton says. “And if we can merge the arts with other parts of our culture that interest us, then why not? With ‘Chad’ and ‘The Royale,’ both plays are written by phenomenal writers, writers who have had great success in theater but tremendous success in television and film, as well. They’re already aware of what can engage people in other mediums, and they’ve been able to translate that well to the theater.”
Where “The Royale” used stage theatricality to suggest the sport of boxing — no actor actually landed a punch on stage, but as an audience member, you would have sworn they did — the wrestling in “Chad Deity” is so real, so authentic, that, if you’re sitting close enough to the stage, you might just feel some drops of sweat hit you during some of the more heated moments of the play. Professional wrestler Alexander Gold, who plays The Bad Guy in the show, also serves as wrestling coach for the other actors. Leiba says the training has been intense.
“Soreness, crying, prayers, FaceTime calls with my family asking, ‘What am I doing?’” he answers with a big laugh when asked how the first couple of wrestling sessions went. “But TheatreSquared has been amazing about providing services for us and making sure we’re taking care of ourselves. We have to show this kind of work in order to tell the story truthfully and authentically.”
Actor Vince Teninty returns to the T2 stage, where he’s performed before in “Detroit” and “The Royale,” as THE Wrestling CEO Everett K. Olson, known as EKO in the industry. Teninty notes that this commitment to the authenticity of the sport is a nod of respect from the playwright to the audience.
“What Kristopher Diaz has done is said, ‘Hi, professional wrestling people: I know you might not be big on theater, but I’m gonna hug you and bring you in and allow you to experience the show from your point of view,’” he says. “And it is not making fun of wrestling. It is not condescending towards it in any way. It’s actually uplifting the entertainment and the sport of it so that when you watch it, you think, ‘Yes! This is why I love professional wrestling.’”
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FAQ
‘The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity’
WHEN — 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through May 8
WHERE — TheatreSquared, 477 W. Spring St. in Fayetteville
COST — $10-$54
INFO — 777-7477 or theatre2.org
Lara Jo Hightower, for several years a writer for The Free Weekly, now works with TheatreSquared and occasionally contributes here. Email her at larajo@larajo.com.
