Jeffrey Ellis News

As Kinky Boots continues its national tour, which sets down roots in Nashville for a week's worth of performances at TPAC starting Tuesday, February 3, Harvey Fierstein talks about the journey of the musical and his collaboration with Cyndi Lauper and Jerry Mitchell…

Over the coming months, we'll be sharing some of the fondest, funniest and most moving memories shared by many CCP alumni as we commemorate the company's golden anniversary. We kick off the celebration today with remembrances from Ryan Haderlie, Harry Bryce and Matthew Hayes Hunter. As they take us down memory lane, you're likely to feel like you're right there in Crossville, being treated to the transformative, transporting work of 2013 First Night Honoree Jim Crabtree and his team - his family, really - still focused on creating art in the middle of Tennessee…

Ashley Glore, who was graduated from Nashville's Belmont University last May, has quickly made a name for herself on area stages with her acclaimed performances in such shows as Closer at Bongo After Hours Theatre, Theatre With Chldren at Play Theatre Company and Seascape With Sharks and Dancer for Spaghetti Theatre (directed by Bethany Langford). A native of Anchorage, Alaska, she lived in New York for two years (studying at Pace University) prior to transferring to Belmont.

One of Broadway's quintessential renaissance men, Jerry Mitchell talked about the genesis of Kinky Boots the Musical and his unique collaboration with Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein

Today, we introduce you to Hume-Fogg Academic High School senior Ray Gleaves, a 17-year-old senior who's been an integral member of Daron Bruce's theater productions, as well as a four year member of the school concert choir (he's serving as president this year), a three year member of The Blue Notes (the HFA show choir), as well as a three year member of both Resonance (the school's men's choir) and The HFA Singers, which is best described as a small specialty ensemble. Among the roles on his theatrical resume are Anxious in West Side Story, Seaweed J. Stubbs in Hairspray, Otto in Cabaret and Simon of Legree/male ensemble in The King and I.

First-time Broadway composer Cyndi Lauper, who first conquered the music charts back in the 1980s, recently sat down to talk about her Kinky Boots experience and to share the show's impact on her own life - which provided much of her inspiration as she approached the project.

Over the coming months, we'll be sharing some of the fondest, funniest and most moving memories shared by many CCP alumni as we commemorate the company's golden anniversary. We kick off the celebration today with remembrances from Daniel W. Black, Jessica Wockenfuss, Lar'Juanette Williams and Brenda Sparks. As they take us down memory lane, you're likely to feel like you're right there in Crossville, being treated to the transformative, transporting work of 2013 First Night Honoree Jim Crabtree and his team - his family, really - still focused on creating art in the middle of Tennessee...

As hard as it may be to fathom, the calendar indicates we're practically to February already and 2015 is off and running like some out-of-control roller coaster. Perhaps no one is more acutely aware of this than Emily Hughes, an acting major at Nashville's Lipscomb University, who no sooner than she had her bags unpacked from Christmas break that she was already hard at work on her next assignment: playing Mayzie LaBird in Seussical the Musical, which runs February 13-22 at Collins Alumni Auditorium.

Nashville's non-profit Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) created a record-breaking economic impact of more than $64 million during its 2013-14 season. The impact, based on the nationally accepted formula from Americans for the Arts, is one of four records broken by the organization during the banner year, according to its annual report released today at a partnership event

With a new year comes a lot of new theater in Nashville and in 2015, area theater companies are heating up winter with some of the most compelling and challenging productions to grace local stages in quite some time. Already, Circle Players and Nashville Shakespeare Festival have upped the ante with their respective productions of Ragtime the Musical and Twelfth Night (NSF traditionally kicks off the dramatics with their winter production at Belmont University's Troutt Theatre), and in the coming weeks theater-goers will be treated to even more, top-notch, high-quality theatrics.

This week we introduce you to one of Paula Flautt's outstanding actors: Holly Hill, an 18-year-old senior at Christ Presbyterian Academy, who is busy doing her college auditions while preparing for what could well be the most challenging role any young actress could aspire to: Mary Poppins in CPA's April production of the Broadway musical. In addition, she is a member of the Tennessee State Thespian Conference advisory board

Much has been made of late about a reviewer for the Wall Street Journal - by the name of Joanne Kaufman - who recently wrote a column in which she fairly chortled about regularly sneaking out of shows she was being paid to review in order to go home early, rather than sit through sub-par productions of questionable quality.

Why do you do theater? We've been putting that question to members of the Nashville theater famiy for the past month to find out what it is that motivates creative types to pursue an illusory and challenging career, while for others the theater gives them a creative avocation that helps keep them sane. Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce two more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: James Rudolph and Shawn Knight.

One of Nashville's favorite young actors is quickly growing up. As a teenager, he was onstage for countless area theater companies, but now he's known as James Spencer Dean and he's pursuing his bachelor of fine arts degree in musical theater at The Boston Conservatory. Who'd have thought that Spencer Dean, who delighted audiences in numerous Act Too productions and was a 2012 First Night Most Promising Actor, would now be known as "James Spencer Dean" and wowing audiences in the northeast just as did back home?

If you're in need of some intense family drama leavened with heaping helpings of laughter - just like the kind Mama and them can dish up along with the grits and the gravy - then look no further than ACT 1's cracklin' production of Del Shores' Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will?

Celebrating its 65th season, Nashville's Circle Players is Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization and I can think of no better way to celebrate that milestone than with the company's current show, the Tim Larson-directed version of Ragtime, the musical adaptation of the acclaimed E.L. Doctorow novel.

Oh, that wacky and wily Joy Tilley Perryman…she's one of Nashville's favorite comedic actors and tonight she assays another Del Shores role as she opens Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will? for ACT 1 at the Darkhorse Theater. Because of that, she has our Friday Five spotlight focused squarely on her while she teases her hair high to heaven and creates food props that'll make you want to slap your mama!

Since yesterday afternoon, when news of the death of Nashville theater stalwart Marianne Clark began making its way through the community, people have taken to social media to send their own farewells, to express heartfelt thoughts and to remember warmly the impact of Clark's stage career and the affects of the untimely demise of one of our own theatrical legends. You see, if Layne Sasser is Nashville's Betty White, as I maintain, and Nan Gurley is Meryl Streep, Denice Hicks is Emma Thompson and Vali Forrister is our answer to Susan Sarandon, then it would go that Marianne Clark was probably our version of Elaine Stritch.

This week we introduce the lovely and graceful Jessie Gholson, a 17-year-old senior at Hume-Fogg Academic High School. She recently completed a run in the school's fall production of The King and I, playing the leading role of Anna Leonowens. Her previous roles at HFA include Amber Von Tussle in Hairspray and a Kit Kat Girl in Cabaret. Jessie is also a member of The Blue Notes show choir for the third consecutive year.

Theater folk from throughout Tennessee gathered at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater on Sunday night for Midwinter's First Night, which included the presentation of the BroadwayWorld Nashville Awards, recognizing performers and productions brought to the stage between October 2013 and September 2014.