Jeffrey Ellis News

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five (on Thursday!): five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. This week the spotlight shines one day early on David Arnold, who opens tonight in Circle Players' production of Ragtime the Musical, starring as Father.

Marianne Clark, longtime leader of Nashville's theater community, died Wednesday while doctors attempted to bring her out of a drug-induced coma after she suffered a heart attack Sunday night at home.

When members of the Tennessee State Thespian Conference gather in Murfreesboro this weekend, one of the many offerings they'll be treated to is a performance of The Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Beauty and the Beast, presented by Nashville's Christ Presbyterian Academy.

Bawdy, irreverent, perhaps even unhinged: What better way to describe Midwinter's First Night? Held Sunday night at Backstage at the Barn, the intimate cabaret theater at Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, the slightly offbeat, decidedly more casual younger sibling of The First Night Honors focused on the fun, while honoring some of Middle Tennessee's best and brightest with First Night Awards.

Lauren Knoop, a Nashville native, is currently a senior at Belmont University, pursuing her BFA degree in theatre performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the university that has helped to transform the term "academic theater" into something far more substantial than it once may have been considered. A 2013 First Night Most Promising Actor, Lauren has her eyes set squarely on her prize: May 2015 graduation.

Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: Tamiko S. Robinson, Nan Gurley and Wayne Gurley.

Denice Hicks' vision for Twelfth Night warmly ingratiates itself with the fluidity of its presentation, enacted by a delightful cast of NSF veterans and newcomers who envelop their audience with genuinely high-spirited good feelings sure to thaw the most frozen of hearts.

This week the spotlight shines on Austin Ryan Hunt, who not only just started the final semester of his senior year at Lipscomb University, but was also among the opening night cast for Nashville Shakespeare Festival's winter season offering of Twelfth Night.

In today's installment of High School Drama, the spotlight falls on a young man who exemplifies the term 'renaissance man': Brayden Myrick of Nashville's Hillsboro High School.

Today's spotlight falls upon Michael Bouson and Joe Correll, two of the loveliest people I've ever known. Creative and imaginative, they brought their hilarious hijinks to the stage when they founded The Avante Garage Comedy Repertory Theatre, a comedy improv/musical theater company that set stages afire throughout Music City, introducing some of the region's best-loved performers to audiences who still remember every joke, every laugh and every song. Now living in Los Angeles, where they are both involved in television production, Michael and Joe made a triumphant return to Nashville in late August, when they were saluted at The First Night Honors of 2014.

Among those young actors is Lipscomb University's Jonah Jackson, a native of Shelbyville, Tennessee, and a candidate for a bachelor of fine arts with an acting major. A 2014 First Night Most Promising Actor, among his many credits are Lord Farquaad in Shrek: the Musical (Lipscomb University and Circle Players), Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (Springhouse Theatre) and A-Rab in West Side Story (Lipscomb University). Just over the horizon for 2015, he has the roles of General Genghis Khan Schmitz in Seussical and Gerry in Dancing at Lughnasa on tap.

It's back and it's this Sunday, January 11: Midwinter's First Night, aka The First Night Honors' misbehavin' younger sibling, will feature fun, frivolities, special performances, food and drinks, the presentation of The BWW Nashville Awards and, of course, the awarding of First Night's Best of 2014 honors. Sly, irreverent and slightly decadent, Midwinter's First Night will be held at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Nashville's iconic theatrical venue since 1964.

Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: Justin Boyd, Amber Boyer and Maryanna Clarke.

What better way to commemorate the 100th birthday of one of the nation's most storied theaters - The Shubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut - than with a special video starring the national company of Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the first show to take the stage in the theater's centennial year?

This week's spotlight focuses on JJ Rodgers, one of Music City's finest actresses, who opened this week in Hendersonville's Actors Point Theater Company's holiday season offering of It's A Wonderful Life, A Live Radio Play, directed by 2014 First Night Star Award winner Greg Wilson.

Today's spotlight falls upon Chambers Stevens, who defines the word "multi-hyphenate." (Seriously, look in a dictionary-they still make dictionaries, don't they?-and you'll find his headshot next to the word.) He is an actor-director-playwright-acting coach-producer-consultant-husband-and-father. And in 2012, he was recognized as a First Night Honoree for the role he has played in the development of theater in Tennessee.

Our series continues this week with our first home-schooled actor, the lovely and talented Kaila Wooten, an amazingly talented and remarkably poised teenager who has been on stages throughout Middle Tennessee for much of her life and in 2013 was named a First Night Honors Most Promising Actor.

One needn't be clairvoyant to sense that Delaney Amatrudo is destined for stardom; that's been evident, at the very least, since she was a middle schooler. For Nashville area audiences who have been lucky enough to see her live and onstage, it's very obvious that she possesses that ethereal quality which makes her stand out in any crowd, that is especially noticeable when she is onstage, and which burns brightly regardless of the situation.

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 three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: John Silvestro, Carolyn German and John Mauldin-or as we like to call them, "Two Johns and a German."

Myra Stephens has had a busy week, as is wont to happen when tech week descends upon a production, so she can be forgiven for not completely understanding the five questions that comprise our Friday Five, a regular feature designed to introduce members of Tennessee's theater community to the world at-large.