Randal Cooper

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! And welcome to April 27 - aka #TheatreThursday - during which we ask the musical question: With 13 shows in the 2016-17 Broadway Season, which shows will be forgotten come Tony Award-nomination day (which is next week, if memory serves) and sink under the weight of all the swell competition? Think about it, people! What are your favorites for Tony glory this year? We'll be sure to send you an invitation to our Tony Party!

Will Miranne and Daniel Morgan give top-notch performances, playing Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in soon-to-be Lipscomb University theater grad Jonah Jackson's production of Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, now onstage at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre through May 7.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

They're dishing up some tasty Rumors at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - along with the bountiful buffet of Southern delicacies - while at Donelson's The Larry Keeton Theatre, the last two performances of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest are served up this weekend, and the national touring company of Mamma Mia! winds up its weeklong stand at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall. And the intrepid Nashville Repertory Theatre Professional Interns present their very own production of Gruesome Playground Injuries.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Imagine if Picasso and Einstein had actually met: That's the premise for comedian-turned-playwright Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which opens this Today, April 22, at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre.

Shows are opening (Carolyn German unveils her latest, Go From Here, and Nashville Ballet revives Carmina Burana, both this weekend), shows are closing (your last chance to catch The Taffetas at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre before they go the way of The Plaids is this weekend) and The Miss Firecracker Contest is back onstage at Donelson's Larry Keeton Theatre for the second of three weekends. Obviously, the 2016 theater season continues to reveal itself at a breakneck pace, giving audiences a veritable buffet of offerings from which to choose.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Imagine if Picasso and Einstein had actually met: That's the premise for comedian-turned-playwright Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which opens this Friday, April 22, at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre.

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

There is an iconic scene in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard - based on the memorable film by Billy Wilder - in which Norma Desmond returns triumphantly (in Norma's myopic view of life since the talkies spelled an end to silent pictures, in which she made her fortune with her expressive face) to Paramount studios for an impromptu meeting with Cecil B. DeMille on the set of Samson and Delilah. Impressively played by Ginger Newman in the Nashville debut of Sunset Boulevard at The Larry Keeton Theatre, Norma is beautifully clad in haute couture, generating star power and unaware that she has slipped into obscurity for the most part, her legions of fans decimated by time and the general vagaries of life.

Taking on a stage role that was indelibly created onscreen by Erich Von Stroheim has got to be a daunting experience, but Nashville actor Randal Cooper takes on the theatrical challenge in The Larry Keeton Theatre's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, onstage in Donelson through March 5.

2014 First Night Honoree - and one of Nashville's most acclaimed actresses, cabaret artists and music directors - Ginger Newman is "ready for [her] close-up," as Norma Desmond in The Larry Keeton Theatre puts the finishing touches on their upcoming production of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Sunset Boulevard.

2014 First Night Honoree – and one of Nashville's most acclaimed actresses, cabaret artists and music directors – Ginger Newman is “ready for [her] close-up,” as Norma Desmond in The Larry Keeton Theatre puts the finishing touches on their upcoming production of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Sunset Boulevard.

Thus, we are happy to present one of our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come

Theater in Tennessee has never been busier nor has it been more diverse than what you'll find onstage this weekend throughout the Volunteer State. From frothy and fun summer musicals that are sure to make you think - like All Shook Up at Chaffin's Barn and A Chorus Line at Cumberland County Playhouse - to new plays from Shawn Whitsell (his latest, Songs For Our Sons, premieres at Darkhorse Theatre on Friday night) and emerging playwright Che Pieper (his new script based on the book The Man With the Light in His Window debuts at The Theater Bug this weekend)…the magic of live theater is all around you…even in this heat and humidity! So pull your seersucker suits and sundresses out of the closet, get all gussied up and make your way to the relative cool of a darkened theater for some midsummer magic!

And Sondra Morton, Jayme Smith and co. (that would be Act Too) stages their company's latest work at the historic Franklin Theatre - The Sound of Music - starring Kimberly Rye as Maria, Cameron Bortz as Rolf and the inimitable Matt Baugher as Georg Von Trapp. Check it out!

After four critically acclaimed seasons, Nashville's Blackbird Theater (winner of the 2013 First Night Award for outstanding theater company) opens what company founders Greg Greene and Wes Driver call their “magnum opus,” the new musical Myth, opening this Friday night, July 17, running through July 26 at the Hillsboro High School Theatre in Green Hills.