Entertain us.

There's a new outfit in town that promises to help make Arkansas a bigger player in the entertainment industry.

Anita Waxman and Arkansan Elizabeth Williams, Broadway producers, have formed a partnership between their New York company and a Little Rock investment firm to help promote and produce more entertainment in the state under the Waxman Williams/SHI title.

Sea Heritage Investments LLC of Little Rock, run by Steve Parks, is the second party in the deal, behind Waxman Williams Entertainment LP of New York.

A spokeswoman for the new company, Marion Kalm, said Waxman Williams/SHI will operate from an office in the Donaghey Building in downtown Little Rock.

"It's an exciting thing not only from an entertainment standpoint but from an economic development standpoint as well," Kahn said. "We're talking about expanding an industry that now offers very few jobs in central Arkansas."

Along with a variety of television and film projects both in production and in development at its Little Rock office, the new company has partnered with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre to present developmental productions of new plays there for eventual rollout around the world.

The first production for The Rep is already planned: an adaptation of the hit sitcom "Designing Women" by Linda Bloodworth Thomason. Word is that the play's producers are now in talks with the show's original cast (Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Jean Smart, Annie Potts and Meshach Taylor) to star in the production. The play will be launched at The Rep and--if all goes as hoped--will have a tour and a run on Broadway.

Several documentaries are in postproduction in Little Rock, including a series chronicling the discovery and exploration of shipwrecks off the coast of Panama.