Sam Douglas

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago continues its 24th Theatrical Reading Season with free performances of Shakespeare's comedy of lovers, fairies and amateur actors, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, running Feb. 15-21, 2019, at eight Chicago-area venues, including two new venues for this season in La Grange and Elmhurst.

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago continues its 24th Theatrical Reading Season with free performances of Shakespeare's comedy of lovers, fairies and amateur actors, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, running Feb. 15-21, 2019, at eight Chicago-area venues, including two new venues for this season in La Grange and Elmhurst.

In anticipation of the gala 30th anniversary celebration of The First Night Awards, Tennessee's best and brightest in live theater were revealed tonight as First Night's Top Ten of 2018 - reviewer and critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual recognition for theater in the Volunteer State - were announced during a Facebook Live presentation from Nashville.

In her welcoming note to audiences at the 2018 version of Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream - the 30th anniversary of the company's annual Shakespeare in the Park festivities at Centennial Park (which now is without question the place to be on a midsummer's night in Music City, all other artistic offerings that abound notwithstanding) - executive artistic director Denice Hicks takes a fanciful look ahead to 2048, and suggests that she'll either be in the audience or, quite possibly, in the cast of whatever show happens to be onstage some 30 years hence. Let me just make this prediction by way of critical pronouncement: Denice Hicks, then 88, will once again be playing the ethereal Puck in NSF's then-current Midsummer and I, who will be a spry 91-year-old at the time (or possibly a critical hologram), will be in the audience once again to marvel at her ageless skills and timeless artistry.

Kathryn Morris ('Cold Case') stars as a Manhattan housewife who gets an unexpected reality check in THE SWEETER SIDE OF LIFE, a Hallmark Channel Original Movie World Premiere tonight, January 19 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8C).

Kathryn Morris ('Cold Case') stars as a Manhattan housewife who gets an unexpected reality check in THE SWEETER SIDE OF LIFE, a Hallmark Channel Original Movie World Premiere Saturday, January 19 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8C).

When you live in a city ringed by suburbs like Old Hickory and Hermitage, when one of the most popular tourist attractions is The Hermitage and we all think of Andy Jackson as someone we know (his visage is found on countless public buildings throughout the city), it just makes sense that Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson would be of interest - not just to me, but to my readers in general and theater lovers in particular. Nashville, you see, is inextricably linked to any version of the Andrew Jackson story you may happen upon, whether it's a Broadway musical (which probably was best-suited to an off-Broadway climate than it was on the main stem) or any of the best sellers that have stocked bookstore shelves in the past decade.

Complete casting has been announced for Trevor Nunn's abridged London staging of the Gershwin classic Porgy and Bess, which begins performances in October