Laura Matula News

Spring is here! Why doesn't my heart go dancing? Well, Mr. Lorenz Hart, personally, we are too damn busy with creating the magic of live theater: We're directing a show (Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will? opens next week - April 20 - at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, thank you very much) and trying to make it out to see as much theater in Nashville as possible before old age takes its toll - it's tough out there for a theater critic!

Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Cori Anne Laemelle, Melodie Madden Adams and Megan Murphy Chambers - collectively known as MAS Nashville - return to the stage for their tenth cabaret performance appropriately entitled MAS X, playing the Belcourt Theatre on Monday, April 17. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m.

Studio Tenn and Tennessee Performing Arts Center's joint venture to produce Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita in Nashville resulted in the production claiming the top prize as "Outstanding Musical of The Year" at Sunday's Midwinter's First Night event at The Larry Keeton Theatre. Nashville Repertory Theatre's production of Nate Eppler's original play Good Monsters took the title of "Outstanding Play of The Year" in the annual ceremony that dates back to its origins in 1989.

Tony Award-nominated director Lynne Taylor-Corbett (Swing!) helms Part of the Plan, an original musical featuring the songs of the late, celebrated singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg, currently in development at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center which this week will receive a 29-hour Equity staged reading with three invitation-only presentations September 22-24.

It's another one of those perplexing and invigorating weekends in Nashville theater as some of the season's most anticipated shows open - and theater-goers find themselves sometimes making a "Sophie's Choice" decision in some cases when the options somehow seem overwhelming. And as confounding as that can be for audiences, it once again shows that the theater scene in these parts remains as vital and as artistically challenging as ever…

Tony Award winner Anthony Crivello will join the cast of Studio Tenn and Tennessee Performinig Arts Center's production of Evita this September, playing the role of Juan Peron. Playing opposite Crivello in the eponymous role of Eva Peron is Broadway diva Eden Espinosa.

Oh, for the love of God, we get it, we get it: The superwomen – who might best be described as the superheroines of Nashville's theaterati and assorted non-stagey types – of SuperMAS love each other, admire each other's mad musical theater skills and get along as well as a bunch of Canadians trying to out-courteous one another! But just imagine how much fun it would be if the quintet of superior performers could somehow show us the seamy underbelly of their interactions and artistic collaborations, exposing us to the histrionics of the Real Housewives reality of their relationships…complete with overturned tables, repeated air kisses and trips to faraway lands where they redefine the term “ugly Americans.”

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.

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.

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.

Nashville's remarkable quintet of divas - Erin Parker, Melodie Madden Adams, Cori Laemmel, Laura Matula and Megan Murphy Chambers, aka Mas Nashville - implore you to save the date of Tuesday, April 19, when they'll unveil their latest collaborative effort (which will reveal their superheroine alter egos): SuperMAS.

We pride ourselves on our bounteous Southern hospitality here in Nashville, so who's gonna explain this: On Thursday, as thousands of country music fans gathered downtown for CMA Fest and thousands more fans of every musical genre you can think of were headed southward for the Bonnaroo Music Festival - just another summer in Tennessee, mind you - a truck spilled its load all over Interstate 65-S, adding to the hot, humid atmosphere with a whole mess of fish parts. Yep, you heard it right: smelly, disgusting fish parts baking on the hot asphalt under the blazing sun.

Today, we introduce you to Arden Taylor Guice, a 17-year-old high school, whose unique theatrical life sets her apart from others in her age group: She's been a student at Franklin High School, but in her senior year she was lucky enough to gain an internship with the musical theatre program at Belmont University and is now finishing school online. She's also a veteran of Sondra Morton's Act Too Players troupe in Franklin!

MAS, aka Erin Parker, Cori Laemmel, Melodie Madden Adams, Laura Matula and Megan Murphy Chambers will take to the Belcourt stage to present their latest holiday cabaret, which follows in a series of critically acclaimed and audience lauded cabaret shows from the five-woman group.

Studio Tenn's season finale production of the operatic epic 'Les Miserables' will celebrate Claude-Michel Schonburg's stirring, masterful score: the core of this sweeping contemporary phenomenon. Made into a major Hollywood motion picture in 2012, 'Les Mis' is the theatre title currently on everyone's lips. In Studio Tenn's production, the music, foremost, will triumph-its full majesty aptly showcased amid the grandeur of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center's acoustically unparalleled Laura Turner Hall on May 3 and 4, 2014.

Studio Tenn's season finale production of the operatic epic 'Les Miserables' will celebrate Claude-Michel Schonburg's stirring, masterful score: the core of this sweeping contemporary phenomenon. Made into a major Hollywood motion picture in 2012, 'Les Mis' is the theatre title currently on everyone's lips. In Studio Tenn's production, the music, foremost, will triumph-its full majesty aptly showcased amid the grandeur of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center's acoustically unparalleled Laura Turner Hall on May 3 and 4, 2014.