Cathy Street

With noteworthy performances across the board, Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of Violet – with a lovely, haunting and emotional score by Jeanine Tesori and a sometimes meandering, oftentimes difficult to follow, libretto by Brian Crawley, based upon Doris Betts’ short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” – closes out the company’s 2022-23 in impressive style that heralds great promise for what is still to come as the Rep moves forward into its 39th season.

Lucy Turner has been a fixture in Nashville theater since she was a toddler, it seems, and now - in an example of how times flies by - the senior at Nashville School of the Arts is in the throes of choosing a college, filing applications and scheduling auditions. She burst upon the local theater scene at ten years old, playing Rhoda Penmark in director Cathy Street's critically acclaimed production of Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed at Street Theatre Company.

Street Theatre Company will perform the regional premier of Brooklyn: The Musical from October 26-November 10.

Stellar performances from a superb ensemble cast have come to exemplify productions from Nashville's Street Theatre Company and, make no mistake about it, the company's latest musical - The Burnt Part Boys, with book by Mariana Elder, music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen - delivers that and more through a haunting story of loss and redemption.

Among the show's stars are Teal Davis and Elliott Robinson, who portray the show's protagonists Huck and Jim and take audiences on a journey down the Mississippi River in the rollicking, rambunctious show. Somehow, the two actors found time in their hectic, tech week schedules and sat down to take on our questions in order to offer some insight into why they do what they do, as well as suggesting why you just can't miss Big River during its three-weekend run at 108 Donelson Pike.

In spring of 2016, Cathy and JJ Street pulled up roots in Nashville - a place they called home for 13 years - and moved eastward to Wilmington, North Carolina, leaving behind scores of friends who'd become like family to them and relinquishing the reins to Street Theatre Company to Jason Tucker, under whom the acclaimed theater company continues to thrive in Music City.

First Night's Top Ten of 2017 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater - were revealed tonight during a live Facebook broadcast at 7:30 p.m. (CST), with Actor's Bridge Ensemble and Studio Tenn/TPAC leading the nods in this year's listing of categories.

Tech week is under way for Lipscomb University's theatre students as they find themselves coming down to the wire for Friday night's opening of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and there is perhaps no cast member more anxious to perform the popular musical in front of a living, breathing audience than Scott Patrick Wilson, one of the most notable LDoT students on campus.

As she gathered other artists around her to collaborate, Cathy Street's impact on Nashville theater became something that will be long remembered as she pursues theatrical adventures in the coming years. Today, we take a look at Cathy's years in Nashville, by letting her theater family express themselves about the impact she has had on their lives and what she means to them...

Shows are opening, shows are closing and the newly reimagined national tour of The Phantom of the Opera continues its run at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center this weekend. Theater in Tennessee continues its fast-paced run through 2016 with a number of new openings this week, thanks to Bongo After Hours Theatre, Nashville Rep, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Circle Players and more - and Cumberland County Playhouse, Arts Center of Cannon County, Street Theatre Company, Lakewood Theatre Company and ACT 1 continue runs of their latest shows - to give you even more opportunities to celebrate the magic of live theater in the Volunteer State! And on Monday night, The Chicago Talking Machine Company premieres its first Nashville show at the Centennial Black Box Theatre.

Winter's apparently over - it's in the mid-70s, balmy and windy, as we write this - and even before Spring pops up all over, there's an amazing amount of good theater to be found in the Nashville area. In fact, there's so much to choose from that you have absolutely no excuse staying alone in your room. Instead, in the wise and wonderful words of Sally Bowles, life is a cabaret and you're far more likely to find that out in the darkened confines of a theater, where magic and mayhem is bound to happen.

Nashville audiences this weekend are treated to a unique opportunity insofar as In The Heights is concerned: two stunning and startling, yet somehow altogether different, productions of Miranda's first masterpiece (you young people who are caught up in the specter of Hamilton have this earlier work to thank for your newfound enthusiasm for musical theater) to be inspired by - two shows that are almost alarmingly good and amazingly performed. Daron Bruce and Lisa Forbis' cadre of young performers at Nashville's Hume Fogg Academic High School will deliver their rendition of In The Heights for only one more performance (tonight, on Nashville's Broadway, is the last of three shows), while Street Theatre Company's founding artistic director Cathy Street bids farewell to her adopted hometown of ten years with her beautifully directed staging at Bailey Middle School, which opened last night for the first of three weekends of performances.

Nashville's Street Theatre Company launches its 11th season with Lin Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning In The Heights, the smash musical that took Broadway by storm and paved the way for Miranda's new Broadway blockbuster Hamilton. Directed by STC founding artistic director Cathy Sanborn Street, In The Heights, running March 4-20, will be her farewell production in Nashville as she and her husband, JJ Street - an integral member of the theater's creative team since its beginnings - move to Wilmington, North Carolina in March.

Today, we introduce you to four cast members from In The Heights - Lipscomb University's Bekah Purifoy, Belmont University's Chris D. Lee and Arik Vega, and one of the newest members of the Nashville theater community, Ashley Wolfe. Purifoy is a 2015 First Night Most Promising Actor, while Lee and Vega are members of the 2016 Class. Wolfe electrified the audience with her performance at Midwinter's First Night in January.

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.

Street Theatre Company, now entering its 11th season, blazes beautifully into 2016 by staging IN THE HEIGHTS, the smash musical that took Broadway by storm.

Here's a question you may have asked yourself about Tosha Pendergrast: When does she sleep? Mundane, perhaps - but it's a question that comes to mind when you realize that she's always working, whether she's teaching students at Lauri Gregoire's Bellevue Dance Center, choreographing her latest show (Dreamgirls opened just last week at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts, Street Theatre Company's production of In The Heights opens in a couple of weeks), performing onstage (she was among the cavalcade of stars in the Music City Theatre Collective's debut production Showstoppers), doing television appearances (The Dance Network is calling) or just living life with her handsome and charming husband Benjamin Pendergrast (together they are the perfect couple, each devoted to the other)…

Street Theatre Company, now entering its 11th season, blazes beautifully into 2016 by staging IN THE HEIGHTS, the smash musical that took Broadway by storm.

Nashville's Street Theatre Company launches its 11th season with Lin Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning In The Heights, the smash musical that took Broadway by storm and paved the way for Miranda's new Broadway blockbuster Hamilton. Directed by STC founding artistic director Cathy Sanborn Street, In The Heights, running March 4-20, will be her farewell production in Nashville as she and her husband, JJ Street - an integral member of the theater's creative team since its beginnings - move to Wilmington, North Carolina in March.

Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.