CONWAY, Ark. (Oct. 28, 2005) - Veteran character actor Brent Jennings, brother of Hendrix Professor James Jennings, will direct a student theatrical production of John Guare's Landscape of the Body in Cabe Theatre at Hendrix College.
The performance will be at 7:30 p.m. daily from Nov. 16 through Nov. 19 with an additional matinee on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 2 p.m.
Jennings, a native Arkansan, is this year's Hendrix-Murphy Foundation visiting theatre director. The play is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance and the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation. For reservations, call the box office at (501) 450-1343.
Jennings began his acting career at the Arkansas Arts Center during his senior year at Little Rock Central High School. In 1974, he graduated from Emerson College in Boston, Mass., with a dual major in mass communications and acting. He was awarded the Carol Burnett Award upon graduation, an award presented annually by the college's School of Arts to the most promising senior.
For the next 10 years, Jennings lived in New York Citywhere he worked with numerous rising stars. He performed alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington in the Negro Ensemble Company's Pulitzer Prize-winning production of A Soldier's Play. He also appeared on Broadway with Morgan Freeman in The Mighty Gents and with Michael Moriarty in the Vietnamdrama G.R. Point. Regionally, he appeared in productions at the John F. KennedyCenterfor the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Geva Theatre and Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre.
While in New York, Jenningsalso began working in television and film. His first film work was with Robert Redford in the movie Brubaker, a story set in Arkansas. He also worked with the late country western legend, Johnny Cash, and appeared with Harrison Ford in the Academy Award-winning thriller Witness in 1985. Other film credits include Wes Craven's horror classic, The Serpent and the Rainbow, in which Jenningsplayed the lead role; Red Heat; Another 48HRs; Live Wire; and the Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence prison comedy, Life.
Jenningshas appeared in more than 50 network television shows, including guest appearances on ER, The Practice, The Guardian and NYPD Blue. He was most recently seen in the new NBC drama, Medium, starring Patricia Arquette. He has also been involved with several HBO and Showtime projects.
Landscape of the Body is set in 1970s Greenwich Village, where a slew of mysterious and seemingly isolated events connect a group of people on a nightmarish quest for the American Dream. Through twists in time and with some help from a singing narrator back from the dead, Guare weaves an amazingly entertaining tale of their tragic and comic collisions that force them to discover what it is like to be left with - or blessed with - nothing but themselves.
Hendrix, founded in 1876, is a selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts college emphasizing experiential learning in a demanding yet supportive environment. Hendrix was selected this year by the Princeton Review as the nation's No. 4 "best value" college. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.
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Contact: Jamie Fotioo, fotioo@hendrix.edu, 501/450-1381