Patty Payne News

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 notebooks, 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.

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.

Thus, we are happy to present one of our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come

Thus, we are happy to present one of our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2016 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come.

After 30 years away from her first professional theater home, Tennessee theater icon Martha Wilkinson proves that you can go home again as she directs Cumberland County Playhouse's first show of the 2016 season: Church Basement Ladies, which opened at the Crossville theater last Saturday, January 16.

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.

And Sondra Morton, Jayme Smith and co. (that would be Act Too) stages their company's latest work at the historic Franklin Theatre - The Sound of Music - starring Kimberly Rye as Maria, Cameron Bortz as Rolf and the inimitable Matt Baugher as Georg Von Trapp. Check it out!

There are four new shows opening in the Middle Tennessee area this weekend, along with several other shows continuing their runs - Nobody's Perfect at Chaffin's Barn, KB Productions' The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, Mary Poppins and Smoke on the Mountain at Cumberland County Playhouse, along with the final performance of Singin' in the Rain - so there's plenty of theater to keep you entertained through a hot July weekend. It's that time of year, so go have some fun!

Summer's theater lull has come to an end and Nashville/Tennessee audiences have a plethora of new openings to choose from iin the next fews days, leading to the season's busiest flush of new shows and productions. Whether it's a relatively new musical based on a fun film, the controversial revival of one of the late 20th century's most iconic musicals or the Nashville premiere of a new film starring some of the region's best known and most talented actors -- there's a lot of good stuff to be seen inside a theater...

Can you believe that it's already time to celebrate Independence Day - aka The Fourth of July - with the biggest-in-the-country fireworks display right here in Music City USA? We know how to celebrate America's Independence right here in Nashville and we expect even more tourists (playwright/actor/director/producer/bon vivant Del Shores is in town, for example, to get a taste of a down-home good time) than normal to fill our city's streets over the four-day holiday weekend.

Looking for a way to beat the heat this weekend? What's better than sinking into a seat in a darkened auditorium and letting the talented actors onstage whisk you way to a whole different world from the world iin which you toil Monday through Friday? Theater companies throughout the midstate are ready to dazzle you with their latest productions and here are some of this weekend's best bets...

Looking for an early summer diversion? We're happy to suggest some theatrical offerings to occupy your time, to keep you out of the heat and humidity - which seems to have really descended upon us this past week - and place you smack in the middle of a darkened auditorium that's certain to cool you down while entertaining you in high style…

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.