Mike Craver News

Discover the Seneca Community Players' 52nd Season in 2024 including musicals, plays, their signature haunted house, and more.

What did our critic think of SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN: HOMECOMING at Red Curtain Theatre?

It was in Fall 1995 that I first was introduced to the gospel singing Sanders Family of “up near Siler City, North Carolina,” in a production of Smoke on the Mountain at Nashville's venerable Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre. In 2023, the family returns again, as if by magic or perhaps accompanied by flights of angels, in a warmly nostalgic, sweetly sentimental and altogether lovely production from Studio Tenn -- playing through April 2 -- at the historic sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church in downtown Franklin, which stands in quite nicely for the First Baptist Church of Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, on a Saturday night in 1938.

Hand Clapping, Heart Pumping, Soul Singing: MSMT & Portland Stage Present SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN

 Virginia Repertory Theatre announces its 70th Anniversary Season with a robust roster of dramatic and comedic plays and musicals for the Signature Season at the November Theatre and the Barksdale Season at Hanover Tavern.

Artisan Center Theater has announced auditions for SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN, conceived by Alan Bailey, featuring book by Connie Ray, with musical arrangements by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick.

Ancram Opera House will stream its newest program, LOCAL CHARACTERS, featuring AOH director Paul Ricciardi conducting lively, free-wheeling interviews with local residents to learn what makes them tick, online July 25 at 8PM.

'Smoke on the Mountain' is a entertaining and uplifting show about a 1938 traveling family roadshow bringing gospel music, bluegrass and more. South City Theatre brings this touring performance from church to church for just a few weeks. Even if you are not a religious person, you will find this show to be fun and delightful in character work and music.

Piedmont Players Theatre is holding open auditions for the Main Stage production of Lunch at the Piccadilly, a musical based on the novel by Clyde Edgerton with music and lyrics by Mike Craver and additional lyrics and music by Clyde Edgerton and developed by Steve Umberger. This production will be directed by Reid Leonard.

Theater's power to transform and transport is astonishing and the capability of artists to create a sense of time and place, with words and music and theatrical wizardry to lend a tangible feeling to the experience can leave you breathless. Who'd have ever thought that such thrilling artistry, the very magic of make believe, could be so vividly expressed, so awesomely felt in two hours spent in a backwoods Southern church on a Saturday night in 1938? But that's exactly what happens in Smoke on the Mountain, Connie Ray and Alan Bailey's evocative, down-home musical that lovingly takes its audiences back home again in ways not even Thomas Wolfe may ever have imagined.

The Board of Directors and Artistic Director, David Leidholdt, have announced Millbrook's 2016 season opener, Smoke on the Mountain.

Jo has twenty-four hours to save Hiram Hall, her father's once famous country western saloon. She thinks she has booked a country music trio that is sure to save the day, but there's been a little misunderstanding: can the classical Coghill Trio turn themselves into the country Cowgirl Trio in time to put on a rip-roaring show that will save Hiram Hall from foreclosure?

The Board of Directors and Producing Artistic Director, David E. Leidholdt, are proud to announce the 2016 Season of extraordinary plays and musicals. The 53rd season will feature five Millbrook premieres, including the sequel to last years sold out run The Marvelous Wonderettes, a classic family musical, Disney's Little Mermaid and for the grown-ups, Rock of Ages. The festivities will commence with a special One Night Only benefit concert Broadway ShowStoppers that will help raise funds for Millbrook's youth programs.

The writers of BWW Charlotte have found some picks that will add to your Charlotte summer entertainment fun!

Satire on religion can be fun to watch. Take The Book of Mormon, for example, with its ferocious attack on innocence and man-made intervention. On a much smaller scale, Smoke on the Mountain is an intimate up close theatrical experience that comes to life via its bluegrass-style gospel musical numbers. Some of the stories as told by the Sanders family, a group of traveling singers/musicians, who perform a one-night gig circa 1938 at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Mount Pleasant, North Carolina are wrenchingly funny. In a well-directed and very well-cast revival at Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Smoke on the Mountain becomes a real audience pleasing entertainment.

The former Sally Bowles talks about music on and off stage, her parents' influence on her, and how acting, music, and parental influence resulted in her volunteering for ASTEP (Artists Striving To Eliminate Poverty) in Ecuador

Trustus Theatre concludes its 28th Season as it brings Collected Stories, directed by Milena Herring, to the Thigpen Main Stage. Collected Stories opens Thursday August 15th and runs through August 18th, 2013 - with a special "Columbia Theatre Curtain Call" event following the last performance. This event will bring many of Columbia's theatres, theatre artists, and patrons together to celebrate another thrilling year of performances in 2012 and 2013.

Trustus Theatre concludes its 2013 Off-Off-Lady series next month when it presents Collected Stories, directed by Milena Herring, at the Columbia Museum of Art. Collected Stories opens tonight, May 15 and runs through May 19, 2013.

Trustus Theatre concludes its 2013 Off-Off-Lady series next month when it presents Collected Stories, directed by Milena Herring, at the Columbia Museum of Art. Collected Stories opens Wednesday May 15 and runs through May 19, 2013