Caroline Davis News

Birdland Jazz Club and Birdland Theater are pleased to present the schedule for the month of February! At Birdland Jazz Club, catch the iconic Lionel Hampton Big Band Featuring Jason Marsalis, current GRAMMY nominee Catherine Russell, the Birdland debut of AGUAS Trio with Omar Sosa, Yilian Cañizares and Gustavo Ovalles, and iconic vocalist Jane Monheit. Internationally recognized trumpeter Rachel Therrien, the Seth Weaver Big Band, and The Voice contestant Melinda Rose Rodriguez will also be performing upstairs. 

'It's nice to tell a story about how much beauty there can be in the messiness of human existence'

The audience I saw it with often exploded with laughter.

Following their sold-out performances in January and February, the women of Femme Jam have announced a return engagement at C'mon Everybody in Brooklyn, slated for April 16th at 8pm

Following their sold-out January show, the women of Femme Jam have announced a return engagement at C'mon Everybody in Brooklyn, slated for February 19, 2019 at 8pm. A first-of-its-kind jam session featuring all-female artists, Femme Jam is disrupting New York's male-dominated music scene.

Following their sold-out January show, the women of Femme Jam have announced a return engagement at C'mon Everybody in Brooklyn, slated for February 19, 2019 at 8pm. A first-of-its-kind jam session featuring all-female artists, Femme Jam is disrupting New York's male-dominated music scene.

The MacDowell Colony has awarded fellowships to 86 artists from 18 states and nine countries. Fellows will arrive from Texas, Maine, and Montana, and from as far as Chile, Australia, China, and Israel. They are working in seven disciplines, and 29 percent identify as culturally diverse. The fellowships are for upcoming late winter and spring residencies at one of the nation's leading contemporary arts organizations. 

There's something striking about the way that THE LITTLE FOXES manages to leave an impact on its viewers, not with flash and spectacle, but with its piercing dialogue and moral complexity.

Helen Olaketi Mariah Shute-Pettaway, a 2011 First Night Honoree and one of Nashville's most revered actresses, will take on the iconic role of Regina Giddens in the ACT 1 production of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. Directed by 2014 First Night Honoree Jeffrey Ellis, senior contributing editor for BroadwayWorld.com, The Little Foxes runs at Darkhorse Theatre May 4-19.

The award-winning Proud Mary Theatre Company, South Carolina's first and only theatre company devoted exclusively to LGBTQ+ stories and voices, is proud to announce its second MainStage show, 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood, on February 1-11 at Converse College in Spartanburg.

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.

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.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Thus, we are happy to present the return of one 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. Something's missing? That's an easy fix: just send us a message here, on Facebook, or by email at jeffreyellis37215@att.com.

Caroline Davis' tour-de-force performance as American poet Emily Dickinson distinguishes the current production of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst - onstage through November 22 at The Filming Station Downtown, in a delightful revival helmed by veteran director Melissa Carrelli - and, clearly, is reason enough to make seeing the show an absolute must for theater devotees.

Halloween's all done in, there are still three weeks ahead before we officially give thanks, and Christmas - and all its accompanying frenzy and frivolity - is about seven weeks away! So what's there to do for all the theatrical types jonesing for a trip to make believe? Plenty! Theater companies all over middle Tennessee are showing off their best and brightest, with a number of eagerly anticipated shows opening this weekend and/or continuing from their earlier opening nights and next Tuesday there's a sparkling new Broadway musical swinging through Music City to entertain you…

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.

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.

Longtime theater collaborators Melissa Carrelli and Caroline Davis are back at work, preparing a revival of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst - the acclaimed theatrical exploration of the private life of American poet Emily Dickinson - that debuts November 6 for nine performances at Demetria Kalodimas' The Filming Station in downtown Nashville. Running through November 22, The Belle of Amherst is a joint production of Carelli's In Another Life and producer Scott Orr's Maverick Entertainment Group, in association with Kalodimas' Genuine Human.

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.