Luckinbill shares talent with those back home

FAYETTEVILLE — The theater is half dark, the curtain is drawn, and the actors are awaiting their entrance. He sits quietly, but the anticipation builds, as he wonders what’s going to happen.

“In this moment, the whole audience is together,” he said. “It’s like they’re holding hands. This is different from the movie theatre.”

Laurence “Larry” Luckinbill discussed his career as an actor and his experiences as Sybok, a character from the 1989 movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Saturday (June 23) at the David W. Mullins Library on the University of Arkansas campus.

Since graduating from the University of Arkansas drama department in 1955, Luckinbill has won an Emmy, was nominated for a Tony and became the McIlroy Family Visiting Professor for Performing and Visual Arts. During his week-long stay, he has donated his papers to the Mullins Library and presented Clarence Darrow Tonight! and Teddy Tonight!, two of his original one-man shows, as part of Boar’s Head Players 2012 summer season.

An exhibit of his donations is on display in the Reading Room of the Mullins Library. The collection encases letters, photographs, action figures and props from a long and lively career of more than 40 years of acting in Star Trek, on Broadway and in one-man shows. His development as an actor also led to experience in writing and directing.

Fans attending a reception for him Saturday at the UA had the chance to ask Luckinbill questions about his career, discuss their favorite memories of his work and get autographed photos of him as Sybok.

Questions began eagerly with his Star Trek memories.

“The movie pitch for Star Trek was ‘wagon trains in space,’” he said. “That was it, they were hooked. “We had to make a decision after the first set, and the network wanted to cancel it, but (the director) said, ‘No, we’re going to keep it.’”

The sets for Star Trek were simple.

“Sets had been erected [already], so they just dressed them up a bit,” Luckinbill said. “People hadn’t been to space before.”

Work on the set was a good fit for his acting style and personality.

“I loved William Shatner as a director,” he said. “We got along very well. There was a struggle with him and Leonard [Nimoy]. Leonard was exactly what Spock was —  disengaged. But he had an ego, which Spock wasn’t supposed to have.”

Heidi Thompson, a long-time Trekkie (or Trekker), asked Luckinbill about the spiritual aspect of playing Sybok.

“Absolutely, there was a spirituality to it,” he said. “Bill [the director] wanted a televangelist, but I did my own thing and he never said a word.

His challenge was to mold the character, since “it wasn’t much on paper,” and to make of it what he could.

Luckinbill married Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, the stars of I Love Lucy.