Jeffrey Ellis - Page 102

A perfect example is Chantal Nchako, a native of Douala, Cameroon, and a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. On her burgeoning resume, you will find such projects as The Vagina Monologues at New World Stages; All American Girls at the Actor's Temple; and Henry V at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. In addition, she starred as Agent Cooper in the feature film Raltat, which was nominated in the Pan African Film Festival.

Next up in its 10th Anniversary season, Mt. Juliet's Encore Theatre Company presents Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother. The show opens Friday, March 25 and runs weekends through April 3. Friday and Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. Doors open 30 minutes prior to show time.

Winner of the 2014 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations, The Bridges of Madison County makes its Nashville debut with a limited, one-week engagement at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall on May 10-15. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 18, at 10 a.m. at www.TPAC.org, by phone at (615) 782-4040, and at the TPAC Box Office, 505 Deaderick Street, in downtown Nashville. For group tickets, please call (615) 782-4060.

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.

Melinda Paul and Michael Adcock lead an exhilarating production of the Tony Award-winning Memphis, the Musical - which features an exuberant cast that blends veteran talents like Michael McGee and Susan Walsworth with rising young performers such as Quantavius Rankins and Jordan McCullough, all of whom give their all in bringing the David Bryan-Joe DiPietro work to the stage - running through March 26 at Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County.

After 28 years, more than 10,000 performances on Broadway (where it reigns as the longest running show in history), countless tours and with rabid fans greeting the show at every stop, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera continues to amaze and delight, as noted in its press opening at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall on March 11.

If this is Friday, then there's got to be a new production opening tonight, right? And sure enough, down in Woodbury - home of the Arts Center of Cannon County - 2015 First Night Honoree Darryl Deason unveils his latest directorial assignment with Memphis, The Musical, starring Melinda Paul (most recently seen onstage in Circle Players' Sister Act) and Michael Adcock (who has performed on stages throughout Middle Tennessee) and an ensemble filled with many local stage veterans (including Quantavius Rankins, who closed Dreamgirls at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts less than a fortnight ago) and newcomers.

Winter's apparently over - it's in the mid-70s, balmy and windy, as we write this - and even before Spring pops up all over, there's an amazing amount of good theater to be found in the Nashville area. In fact, there's so much to choose from that you have absolutely no excuse staying alone in your room. Instead, in the wise and wonderful words of Sally Bowles, life is a cabaret and you're far more likely to find that out in the darkened confines of a theater, where magic and mayhem is bound to happen.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of Legally Blonde, the Musical (at Columbia's Center for the Arts) and The Little Mermaid (directed by Brittany Blaire Anderson for Circle Players) and Metro Parks and the Music City Theatre Collective team up for a series of special classes, including an audition workshop, for this spring, and producer Ken Bernstein presents a workshop to enable you to “Tell Your Story” at Bongo After Hours Theatre. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

The regional premiere of Ken Ludwig's comedic take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of The Baskerville - Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery - continues the 16th anniversary season of Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theatre as the company's 74th show debuts March 31, running through April 9

Just in time for wedding season, Jones, Hope and Wooten's Dearly Beloved debuts onstage in neighboring Franklin, via a new Bethlehem Players' production directed by Brett Myers and running April 1-9 at Bethlehem United Methodist Church, 2419 Bethlehem Loop Road, in Franklin's Grassland Area.

Whew! We need a vacation already, so you can only imagine how Cody, the guy with the enormous heart and brilliant imagination must feel! So, here's some quick and sage advice for you: Buy yourself some Cody Rutledge stock and watch its value increase, even as his reputation as both an actor and as a scenic designer continues to grow.

Mix together fable, biblical stories, music and a cast filled with talented local performers, and the result is Circle Players' production of Children of Eden, running March 18-April 3, at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater. This epic musical by the award-winning creators of Wicked (Stephen Schwartz) and Les Miserables (John Caird) continues Circle's 66th season, as the oldest community theater organization in Middle Tennessee.

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 audiences this weekend are treated to a unique opportunity insofar as In The Heights is concerned: two stunning and startling, yet somehow altogether different, productions of Miranda's first masterpiece (you young people who are caught up in the specter of Hamilton have this earlier work to thank for your newfound enthusiasm for musical theater) to be inspired by - two shows that are almost alarmingly good and amazingly performed. Daron Bruce and Lisa Forbis' cadre of young performers at Nashville's Hume Fogg Academic High School will deliver their rendition of In The Heights for only one more performance (tonight, on Nashville's Broadway, is the last of three shows), while Street Theatre Company's founding artistic director Cathy Street bids farewell to her adopted hometown of ten years with her beautifully directed staging at Bailey Middle School, which opened last night for the first of three weekends of performances.

Nashville audiences this weekend find themselves with two concurrently running opportunities to bask in the warm glow of Miranda's heartfelt creation as Hume-Fogg Academic High School's Theatre presents In The Heights for a three-performance run (which premiered last night - on Broadway, naturally, Nashville's Broadway) and Street Theatre Company, which tonight opens its 11th season with its mounting of the show that will run for the next three weekends.

As the reputation of Nashville Ballet has grown over the years, so too have the company's dancers' resumes and notoriety. Case in point: NB principal Kayla Rowser has graced magazine covers, been the subject of numerous media reports and stories, and she has become, without question, one of the best-known proponents of dance in a city where music has long reigned supreme.

Brooke Muriel Ferguson is the latest wunderkind from the Lipscomb University Department of Theatre to make her directorial debut at Towne Centre Theatre, helming the production of the murder mystery Murder's in the Heir that opens tonight in Brentwood.

Today, three of the folks most closely associated with the production - director Moore is joined by cast members Sarah Shepherd and Maggie Pitt - fall under our Friday 5 spotlight, allowing us to get to know more about what makes them tick and why each of them believe audiences should flock to Darkhorse Theatre to see their racy rendition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

Today, we introduce you to four cast members from In The Heights - Lipscomb University's Bekah Purifoy, Belmont University's Chris D. Lee and Arik Vega, and one of the newest members of the Nashville theater community, Ashley Wolfe. Purifoy is a 2015 First Night Most Promising Actor, while Lee and Vega are members of the 2016 Class. Wolfe electrified the audience with her performance at Midwinter's First Night in January.