Matt Cavenaugh and Jenny Powers, the Broadway couple known for their respective performances in West Side Story and Grease, have announced plans to launch North East Arkansas’ first professional theatre early next year.

The Link Theatre Company will be located in Cavenaugh’s hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas, where the couple have spent the last several years raising their two sons.

The theatre’s inaugural production will be Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s Off-Broadway classic The Fantasticks, running March 6–8, 2020, at The Glass Factory in downtown Jonesboro. Cavenaugh will make his directorial debut on the production.

Cavenaugh and Powers will oversee the non-profit plan to utilize a mix of Broadway and local talent to cast the productions, while also drawing from students from Arkansas State University to provide educational and professional opportunities.

Cavenaugh made his Broadway debut in the 2003 musical Urban Cowboy, and later appeared in the Off-Broadway and Broadway runs of Grey Gardens, and A Catered Affair. He starred as Tony in the 2009 Arthur Laurents-helmed Broadway revival of West Side Story.

Powers was most recently seen in the new Ahrens and Flaherty musical Marie, Dancing Still, which played a developmental run at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre earlier this year. Known for her starring role as Rizzo in the 2007 Broadway revival of Grease, Powers’ numerous credits include Little Women, Happiness, Dangerous Beauty, as well as the Encores! productions of It’s a Bird..It’s a Plane..It’s Superman; Of Thee I Sing; and Follies.