Jeffrey Ellis - Page 100

Opening tonight in Mt. Juliet is Encore Theatre Company's production of Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning 'night, Mother, starring Meigie Mabry and Elizabeth Hayes in a revival directed by Joel Meriwether. Today, Mabry and Hayes move into our Friday 5 spotlight, revealing what motivates them to do theater and, perhaps more telling, suggesting why you should buy a ticket and see them in the play…

Actors Bridge Ensemble's 20th anniversary season continues in April with the Nashville premiere of Meg Miroshnik's The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, directed by Leah Lowe and running April 15-23 at the Belmont Black Box Theater.

Get ready for the battle of the sexes as only the greatest playwright of the English language could tell it, as William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew opens at Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre for five public performances in April.

On Friday, April 1, Cumberland County Playhouse presents the Southern Premiere of a new musical comedy by Lori Fischer (Barbara's Blue Kitchen) and Don Chaffer, The Sparkley Clean Funeral Singers! CCP's producing director Bryce McDonald will direct the show, which had its world premiere at the Capital Repertory Theatre in 2013.

Nashville Ballet will conclude its 30th anniversary season with Carmina Burana, a collaboration of epic proportions, that will be performed at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, April 22-24. In addition to Carmina Burana, the seasond finale features the world premiere of Nashville Ballet artistic director and CEO Paul Vasterling's Layla & The Majnun.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of The Little Mermaid (directed by Brittany Blaire Anderson for Circle Players) and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, along with Nashville Shakespeare Festival's upcoming Shakespeare in the Park and Winter Shakespeare productions - and the folks from Disney are planning auditions coming up in April, so you know you want to put on your ears and welcome them to Music City... We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Like so many other college students before her, Emily Meinerding is back from an adventuresome spring break, all set to plunge headlong into the rest of her semester at Nashville's David Lipscomb University. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, the Lipscomb sophomore has already made a name of herself onstage with her critically acclaimed role in The Crucible, a joint production of Blackbird Theater Company and LU Department of Theatre, and as Sleeping Beauty in last fall's campus musical, Into the Woods.

As she gathered other artists around her to collaborate, Cathy Street's impact on Nashville theater became something that will be long remembered as she pursues theatrical adventures in the coming years. Today, we take a look at Cathy's years in Nashville, by letting her theater family express themselves about the impact she has had on their lives and what she means to them...

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.

Chicago is one of my favorite cities on the planet, so it goes that Chicago, the Tony Award- and Oscar-winning musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb, is also one of my favorite stage musicals. Brash, sassy, laugh-out-loud funny at one moment, and heart-tuggingly and sweetly sentimental at the next - with a musical score that's memorable and pitch-perfect in the skillful way it tells the story of wannabe vaudeville superstars Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly - Chicago has been a part of the musical theater vernacular for almost 40 years.

It would have taken a miracle to save the opening night of Circle Players' Children of Eden - one of the most eagerly anticipated productions of the season in Music City - from the wrath of God: in this case an abysmal sound design that prevented the audience from hearing Lauren Frances Jones' exquisite vocal performance as Eve in the Stephen Schwartz/John Caird musical.

There's nothing quite so entertaining - and nothing goes down more easily after a trip to the groaning board at Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - than a musical revue that is sure to whisk you away to yesterday. Not the day before today, necessarily, but 'yesterday' as in a sentimental journey back to a time when life was somehow more innocent and somehow less complicated than what we experience in the day-to-day of 2016.

Garrett Marks, a 2013 magna cum laude graduate of Belmont University, left Nashville with two degrees in hand: a BFA in Dance and a BS in Entertainment Industry Studies - and hasn't slowed down since, it seems, although he maintains it took him a while to find his groove.

Nashville Repertory Theatre's unveils its production of the Kander and Ebb classic Chicago this weekend, as Music City is transformed into the Windy City - well, the Andrew Johnson Theatre at TPAC will be, at least - for a three week run of the show that asks the musical question "What price fame?"

Cast members Wesley King and Cassie Donegan move into our spotlight today, taking on our Friday 5 questions, offering you some insight into how they got to where they are today, what informs their creative process and, perhaps more importantly, telling why they think you should come see their show!

Shows are opening, shows are closing and the newly reimagined national tour of The Phantom of the Opera continues its run at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center this weekend. Theater in Tennessee continues its fast-paced run through 2016 with a number of new openings this week, thanks to Bongo After Hours Theatre, Nashville Rep, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Circle Players and more - and Cumberland County Playhouse, Arts Center of Cannon County, Street Theatre Company, Lakewood Theatre Company and ACT 1 continue runs of their latest shows - to give you even more opportunities to celebrate the magic of live theater in the Volunteer State! And on Monday night, The Chicago Talking Machine Company premieres its first Nashville show at the Centennial Black Box Theatre.

As the national touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera continues its run at TPAC, a brand new theater company debuts in White House this weekend, with another much-anticipated production of The Phantom of the Opera, based upon the novel by Gaston Leroux and featuring music by Donizetti, Mozart, Puccini and Gounod. Adapted by Tracy Wells, Ron Lee directs a cast that includes Deron Ryan Martel, Rebecca Nelson and Jonathan Hunter.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT)  today announces the appointments of longtime Nashville arts leaders Dan Brewer and Bennett Tarleton as Acting Artistic Director and Interim Managing Director, respectively. Brewer and Tarleton will steer NCT through its management transition as the theatre enters into a nation-wide search to fill the recently vacated executive management positions. 

Music City Theatre Company presents Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, directed by Bradley Moore, at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater April 1-9. Taylor Novak, Terry Occhiogrosso, Britt Byrd and Megan Blevins star in Herzog's 4000 Miles, which is described as "a dramatic comedy," that ran Off-Broadway in 2011, and again in 2012, and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of Verge Theater Company's Skinless, Legally Blonde, the Musical (at Columbia's Center for the Arts) and The Little Mermaid (directed by Brittany Blaire Anderson for Circle Players) - and the folks from Disney are planning auditions coming up in April, so you know you want to put on your ears and welcome them to Music City... We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!