CRITICS' CHOICE: What's Happening This Week?

There always seems to be so much to do in Nashville, from a creative and theatrical standpoint, we're often asked for recommendations of what's not to be missed on our calendar. Well, have no fear, gentle readers, we're at your service, at the ready to tell you of the shows you really should see this week and in the coming weeks...

We're all about saving you time and helping you make informed decisions about how to spend your entertainment dollar, after all - and we are delighted to present you with our newest edition of Critic's Choice, filled to the brim with all sorts of fun stuff...enough to keep you off the streets and entertained until sometime next week!

Nashville Ballet closes its current performance season with the return of its critically acclaimed Emergence series, an evening of emerging art featuring four original pieces from Nashville musicians and guest choreographers, May 14-16, at The Martin Center for Nashville Ballet.

Nashville Ballet company dancer Christopher Stuart choreographs an original work set to live music by the world-renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, one of America's foremost a cappella ensembles who are also considered the premier performers of the spiritual, performing songs originally sung by slaves prior to the Civil War. Sixteen singers will perform three selections, including Soon-ah will be Done, There is a Balm in Gilead and I'm Gonna Sing 'til the Spirit Moves in my Heart.

"Emergence is one of the Fisk Jubilee Singers' first collaborations with an outside organization, and it's a privilege to merge our two art forms together for a piece filled with so much historical and emotional richness," Stuart said. "Conveying the spiritual depth of their music through dance adds a new layer of emotion for the audience."

Fresh from Nashville Ballet's Attitude series in February, local singer-songwriter Matthew Perryman Jones is paired with frequent guest choreographer Gina Patterson in a collaboration that blends original music and choreography. Jones and Patterson created their untitled Emergence piece organically in-studio together using inspiration from each other and the dancers.

"Emergence is one of those rare opportunities as an artist where you are not only allowed, but encouraged to create without expectation," Patterson said. "The spirit ofEmergence is about digging deeper and stepping outside of your comfort zone to create an honest, unfiltered piece."

Nashville Ballet Artistic Director and CEO Paul Vasterling, a 2012 First Night Honoree, will choreograph an original piece entitled State of Grace in collaboration with Nashville Opera. It's not the first time the two organizations have performed together, but rather the first time the two have collaborated on a project together from start to finish, incorporating the choreography and vocalists as one. The piece includes three songs by American musical theater composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, A Light in the Piazza), including two from Myths and Hymns and one from Floyd Collins.

Earlier this season, Nashville Ballet invited local dance organizations to audition for the first slot in the evening's lineup. Belmont University Dance Company was selected to perform TrApPed, which uses tap dance rhythms to respond to the idea of being trapped-emotionally, mentally and physically.

Tickets to Emergence are $28 in advance and $35 day of show (based on availability). Tickets can be purchased in person at the TPAC box office in downtown Nashville or by phone at (615) 782-4040. Go to NashvilleBallet.com for details and the full performance schedule and more information.

Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts presents the Frank Wildhorn musical Bonnie and Clyde May 15-31. Bonnie and Clyde is described as an "electrifying story of love, adventure and the crimes that captured the attention of the country is fearless in its betrayal of the reckless young lovers."

With a score of songs by Wildhorn and Don Black, Bonnie and Clyde is the tale of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the two small-town nobodies in West Texas who became two of America's best known folk heroes and the Texas law enforcement's worst nightmares. When Bonnie and Clyde meet, their mutual cravings for excitement and fame immediately set them on a mission to chase their dreams. Their bold and reckless behavior turns the young lovers' thrilling adventure into a downward spiral, putting themselves and their loved ones in trouble with the law. Forced to stay on the run, the two lovers resort to robbery and murder to survive. As the infamous duo's fame grows bigger, their well-known inevitable end plays out for all to see.

The Center for the Arts' production of Bonnie and Clyde is directed by Kim Powers, with musical direction by Charlie Parker and choreography by Emily Davis.

"I love this show because due to being raised by my Grandparents I have a passion for the 1920's/1930's era," Powers explains. "I love the music, and I love the history of this show. This show makes the history accessible to today's generation, and I think that is so important. This cast is super talented and they are doing such a great job with the material."

Starring in the title roles are Michael Adcock as Clyde - a familiar face to Middle Tennessee theater-goers - and Jamie Lawler as Bonnie, who is gracing the Center stage for the second time in her career. Joining them are three newcomers to the Center: Nashville actors Patrick Kramer, Corey Shadd and Britt Byrd. Kramer is cast as Clyde's brother Buck, Shadd as the lovelorn Ted Hinton and Byrd as Blanche Barrow. Gary Davis, who has appeared in numerous productions in Murfreesboro, plays the fire and brimstone Preacher. Rounding out the twenty-eight person cast are numerous ensemble members who also double as multiple characters.

Bonnie and Clyde opens Friday night, May 15, and will run through May 31, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $13 for Seniors, Students and Military and $11 for children age 12 and under. Tickets can be purchased on the Center's website - www.boroarts.org - by calling (615)904-2787, or by stopping by the Center during business hours.

Can you believe that Tennessee Women's Theater Project's Women's Work Theater Festival has been around for nine years? Running through Sunday, May 24, the festival spans styles and genres to offer a completely different program at every performance: poetry and essays; one-woman shows; plays and readings; dance, music, film and a display of visual art works in the theater.

Middle Tennessee's first and only annual showcase for the creative efforts of women came about when Maryanna Clarke, the company's founder and artistic director, was sidelined with a back injury in early 2007: "After weeks with my pain meds and my walker, I had to concede I would not be able to direct the play we had booked for May that year," says Clarke. "I sent emails to every woman artist I knew, offering our stage for their plays, poems, films - all varieties of performing arts."

Women from Nashville and across the country responded, and nine years later the showcase is going strong.

Women's Work 2015 includes both new and returning artists from the Nashville area, plus presenters from Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Saturday, May 23, is Dance Night, always one of the festival's most popular programs. This year's presentation features the work of returning presenters Elaine Husted and Husted Dance, Jen-Jen Lin and Lisa Spradley, Epiphany Dance and Marci Murphree's REASONS Contemporary Dance Ensemble. Alicia Dawn Williams of Girls on Trapeze, best known as an aerialist, will offer a performance of ground exercises. Li Chiao-Ping, a professor at University of Wisconsin, brings the Li Chiao-Ping Dance Troupe from Madison, and Cynthia Adams, a dance instructor at Iowa State, will perform a solo piece. Local dance artists making their Women's Work dance debuts include Megan Ciccolone White, and Erin Law, who will screen a video dance creation.

Women's Work offers playwrights a stage for readings and workshop performances - audience exposure is crucial to the development of a play. Robyn Brooks of Maryland and Marilyn Barner Anselmi of North Carolina understand the benefits: both are presenting readings of new plays for the fourth year in a row. Charissa Menefee, who teaches playwriting at Iowa State-Ames presents a reading of her play How Long Is Fifteen Minutes?, Naima Bush of Jacksonville, Florida brings her Confessions Of A Big Girl, and Janice Liddell of Atlanta offers a reading of her Ptomaine Poison. Also on the roster are plays by Judy Klass, and the comedy troupe Sketchy Nashville Femmes.

Other highlights of Women's Work 2015: a short film from Nashvillian Emily Steele and music from singer/songwriters Wendy Westmoreland, Nancy Nettles and Allison Kerr. This year's visual art display includes photography and mixed media pieces by Lola White and Ashley Mintz.

Single tickets to Women's Work are an affordable $10 each; a $40 Festival Pass is good for admission to all shows. Ticket revenues and the support of sponsors and grantors including HCA Tristar Health and The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, are enabling the company to compensate the presenting artists for their appearances.

Women's Work plays at the Looby Theatre, adjacent to the Looby Branch Library at 2301 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. The festival continues weekends through Sunday May 24. Showtimes are at 7:30 pm Thursday through Saturday, and 2:30 pm Sundays. For a complete schedule of performers, show dates and times, reservations and information, call 615-681-7220, or visit Tennessee Women's Theater Project on Facebook or at its web site (www.twtp.org).

For two more weekends, Murfreesboro Little Theatre presents its 5th annual "Backyard Bard" with William Shakespeare's spirited romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

Bring a picnic, cooler, blanket or lawn chair and enjoy Shakespeare's most popular comedy outdoors in MLT's beautiful backyard. Opening Friday, May 8 at 7 p.m., and running three weekends, this event is FREE to the public, though donations are graciously accepted and concessions will be sold.

Directed by Donna Seage, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing depicts the treacherous Don John's (Jacob Truax) attempts to destroy the true love of Claudio (Wesley Rutledge) for Hero (Jess Townsend) with false accusations of infidelity. Dogberry (Todd Seage), the comically self-important constable, and his hapless underlings stumble upon Don John's treachery, but are they too late to prevent tragedy? The play, however, is better known for its subplot, the battle of wits between Beatrice (Patti Long-Lee) and Benedick (Shane Lowery), and the Prince's (Pete Hiett) comic scheme to unite the two unlikely lovers.

Meanwhile, over at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre, the international sensation Motherhood the Musical comes home for what's proven to be a critically acclaimed run - it continues through May 22. The hilarious show first debuted as a workshop at the Darkhorse Theater in November 2008 and was picked up by several producers by the end of that year.

Motherhood the Musical is a four-woman show from author, songwriter and Nashville mom Sue Fabisch, who tapped into the country market with her wildly successful parody The Mom of Constant Sorrow. Sue performed her songs about motherhood as a one--woman show for years in the Nashville area before rewriting it into the four-­woman format that Motherhood the Musical is today.

The musical, which has 18 original songs, all written or co-­written by Fabisch, includes the hilarious Billboard Top 10 comedy hit, "The Kids Are Finally Asleep"; the rousing call-­to-­shoppers "Costco Queen;" and the tender ballad "I'm Danny's Mom."

Motherhood the Musical shares the humorous, loving journey of Amy, a soon?to-­be first-­time mom; Barb, an over-­worked, underpaid, stressed-­out mother of five; Brooke, a lawyer who works too much and barely sees her kids; and Tasha, a single mom struggling to balance work, family and a divorce. The cast is full of local talent, most of them moms as well: Jaclyn Lisenby Brown, Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, Corrie Miller and Sue Fabisch. The company is directed and choreographed by Kim Nygren, with Production management by Cecelia Lighthall, two more local talents and moms. The award-winning Johnny Rodgers supplies music direction and supervision, arrangements and orchestrations.

Here's my take on the show: Just in time for Mother's Day, Fabisch and her Faby Baby Productions LLC bring their rollicking - and oh-so-entertaining - revue, Motherhood the Musical, to TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre. Featuring dynamic direction by Kim Nygren and starring a quartet of winning singer/actresses, it's a superbly performed and staged show that pulls back the curtain on what moms talk about when the husbands, kids and in-laws (and gay BFFs) are away. It's heartwarming, laugh-out-loud funny and oftentimes remarkably sentimental without being mawkish or maudlin.

Subtitled "The Good, The Bad...and The Laundry" (the only thing I didn't like was the subtitle, by the way), the 90-minute revue takes place at a baby shower for first-time mother Amy (played by Jaclyn Lisenby Brown), thrown by her coterie of mom friends, including divorcee Tasha (Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva), Brooke (Corrie Miller) and Barb (creator Fabisch herself). The three friends welcome Amy to the sorority of moms and take her on a tuneful journey to show her what her life will be like once she welcomes her wee one home.

The potential here is for a treacly sweet paean to motherhood - let's face it, in a society where sailors and longshoremen have long had the word "Mom" tattooed upon their sweaty biceps, mamas rank at the top of the list of things that are sure to render even the most tough, cynical person to wax rhapsodic on the subject - but, thanks to Fabsich's razor-sharp wit, Motherhood the Musical is just freakin' funny, but it has so much heart that it still packs an emotional wallop. In deference to the idea of motherhood (and the very real memories of my own mother that were conjured up in the course of the show), my eyes were fairly leaking during certain moments.

The 2015 Ingram New Works Festival at Nashville Repertory Theatre kicked off last Wednesday night with another brilliant script by Nate Eppler, and there's more to come, including a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, and staged readings of five new plays. The Festival runs through May 16.

The Ingram New Works Project gives playwrights an opportunity to develop new theatre works while in residency at Nashville Rep. Each year, the Project selects a Fellow and three Lab playwrights who all work together with Nashville Rep's Playwright in Residence to develop their new works. For Nashville Rep's 2014-15 season, the Ingram New Works Fellow is Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies, the Lab playwrights are Tori Keenan-Zelt, Bianca Sams and Gabreille Sinclair, and Nashville Rep's Playwright-in-Residence is Nate Eppler.

Readings of the new works will be held through Saturday, May 16 at 7 P.M. each evening. A talkback will immediately follow each reading. The complete Festival schedule is listed below, along with brief descriptions of each show. Each reading is $10 per person, or a Festival Pass to see one reading of each play is available for $35. Reservations can be made online at NashvilleRep.org.

Nashville Rep is a non-profit theatre bringing classic and contemporary theatre to Nashville that inspires empathy and prods intellectual and emotional engagement in audiences. Nashville Rep's upcoming 2015-16 season will include productions of Rapture, Blister, Burn; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Good Monsters; Chicago; and A Christmas Story.

The Ingram New Works Festival will be held in Nashville Rep's rehearsal hall: Studio A at Nashville Public Television, located at 161 Rains Avenue in Nashville.

About the plays:

• The Ice Treatment by Nate Eppler. Reading: May 16. Left behind on the garbage heap of history and misremembered by everyone (herself included), the world's most infamous Olympic figure skater struggles to reinvent herself as a screenwriter. By pitching the blockbuster screenplay of her own amazing and unbelievable life story. It's definitely not the facts, but it's all true.
• Showing by Gabrielle Sinclair. Readings: May 7 and 11. Today is the gender reveal party for Tracy's baby, but when she discovers there may be something wrong with her pregnancy, this cute and fun event with a cake filled with blue or pink frosting becomes for her a ritual with the power to reveal the future, to cleanse her past, to make her a good mother and to keep her child safe.
• Simply Bess by Bianca Sams. Reading: May 12. Simply Bess follows a young African American actress trying to make a name for herself. We see her backstage trials and tribulations on the 1950s European tour of Porgy and Bess, sponsored by the American State Department as a way to combat communist propaganda about racial problems in the United States.
• Air Space by Tori Keenan-Zelt. Reading: May 15. Thirty years ago, Babs and Mack built a house in a small Rust Belt city. One year ago, they lost it to foreclosure. With no place to go, they packed up and moved into the crawl space - secretly. Six months ago, Glory and Kyle bought a foreclosure for $500. As they struggle to flip the falling-down house, two strangers show up to help. A surreal comedy about inventing home, managing family and what we hold onto when nothing that we do is enough.
• A Work-in-Progress by Donald Margulies. Readings: May 13 and 14. We have an exclusive and exciting opportunity to look inside the process of Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies and to be a part of his play that is still under construction. We can't wait to see what unfolds! Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and professor of English at Yale University. He served as Playwright-in-Residence at Sundance Playwright Conference for three summers, and has won a Lucille Lortel Award, an American Theatre Critics Award, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two OBIE Awards, two Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Awards, five Drama Desk Award nominations, two Pulitzer Prize nominations and one Pulitzer Prize.

ACT 1's production of Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, directed by Joy Tilley Perryman, is held over this week for two more performances on Wednesday and Thursday, May 13 and 14, at Darkhorse Theatre.

Here's my take from my review of the opening night performance: Set against the backdrop of major league baseball, peopled with characters who evoke images of sports superstars, and considering what might transpire if one of those athletes were to come out as gay in the middle of a season destined to be one for the record books, Take Me Out - although manipulative and didactic at times despite Greenberg's sharply tuned dialogue and storytelling - focuses tightly upon prejudice, bigotry, classism and racism. Boldly and directly, Greenberg asks his audience to consider the question of "who's to blame?" for all the prejudice in the world - in sports, certainly, but perhaps more intriguingly in the larger world of which baseball is but a small part.

Tilley Perryman's remarkable eye for casting is what is particularly noteworthy about this production of Take Me Out. Somehow (knowing the vagaries of casting community theater in a city such as Nashville), she has assembled an ensemble of actors who breathe vigorous life into their script-bound characters to create the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that is essential to the show's success. Her collaboration with Dave McGinnis (who also assays a couple of effective cameo roles in the piece) on the production's set design results in a winning backdrop for the play's action: a baseball stadium situated in the intimate confines of the Darkhorse Theatre.

Take Me Out is directed by Joy Tilley Perryman, and features Joel Diggs, Kurt Jarvis, Bradley Moore, Eric Butler, Connor Hall, Daniel Vincent, Leon Blandon III, Robert Marigzia, Fernando Ochoa, Shawn Whitsell, Cabot Pyle and Dave McGinnis.