Enoch Porch News

BroadwayWorld brings you the Best of Nashville in the year 2012. Check out the Top Theatre Stories from each month during in the year 2012. We look forward to another exciting year of theatre in 2013!

Carol Irvin, who has been a mainstay at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse for more than 20 years, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe,presented on Saturday, November 17, prior to curtain of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Earlier in the same week, Bralyn Stokes received the robe at Rhubarb Theater's Birds in Church, and Michael Holder and Josh Waldrep claimed it at Street Theatre Company's Miss Saigon in Concert.

Clay Steakley, who plays the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Actors Bridge Ensemble's world premiere production of Bill Feehely's Outside Paradise, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe. Jeffrey Ellis, founder and executive producer of The First Night Honors, presented the robe to Steakley on Saturday, November 10, prior to curtain of Outside Paradise at Belmont University's Black Box Theatre.

Kelsey Porter, who plays the role of Nettie in Circle Players' production of The Color Purple, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe. Jeffrey Ellis, founder and executive producer of The First Night Honors, presented the robe to Porter on Thursday, October 25, prior to the opening night performance of The Color Purple, a joint production of Circle Players and Tennessee State University, at TSU's Performing Arts Center.

On September 2, 2012-during the presentation of The First Night Honors-a new Nashville and Tennessee theater tradition was unveiled with the presentation of the First Night Robe. Fashioned after and inspired by the legendary Broadway Gypsy Robe, the First Night counterpart is presented to someone who is making their first appearance on a Nashville-area stage.

Write this down in your journals, post it on your Facebook, tweet it to your tens of followers, theaterati: Kevin Thornton and Enoch Porch are ridiculously talented! And there's no better way to celebrate the festive Halloween season than with these two-and their gorgeous and versatile cohort/partner-in-theatrical crime Jennifer Richmond-in a performance of Into the Darkness: A Vampire Musical, now onstage at Chaffin's Backstage at the Barn through October 27.