Jeffrey Ellis - Page 104

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts invites supporters to "boogie on down" to dance the night away at their Bash Fever! gala - the seventh annual event will be held Saturday, March 19 - as those gathered continue their revelry this year set to a disco theme.

2015 First Night Honoree Darryl Deason directs Memphis: The Musical, the next offering at Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County, starring Melinda Paul and Michael Adcock as Felicia Farrell and Huey Calhoun. Memphis: The Musical runs March 11-26, featuring choreography by Regina Wilkerson Ward, with music direction by Robert Hiers.

The Quest for Cupcake: A One Woman Show, the latest stage incarnation of writer-musician-actor-performer Kevin Thornton, a presentation that he describes as a "new comedy show in drag" will be performed at Nashville's Bongo After Hours Theatre on Thursday, March 31. Curtain's at 8 p.m. for the acclaimed performer's newest onstage effort.

Somewhere Between - Cidny Williams' "one wo/man show" opens at Nashville's Bongo After Hours Theatre on March 18. Produced by Ken Bernstein, the Grammy-nominated musician's autobiographical show lifts the veil on love, death and gender through storytelling and song.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of God of Carnage (at Nashville's 4th Story Theatre) and Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapine Agile (directed by Jonah Jackson for Towne Centre Theatre) and Metro Parks and the Music City Theatre Collective team up for a series of special classes, including an audition workshop, for this spring. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Ashley Eskew – a native of Irvine, California, who did her undergraduate work at Northwestern University, where she earned a BS in Theater, with a certificate in Music Theater – is one such member of the rather rarefied group of aspiring actors earning advanced degrees from USC this year.

Among offerings this month are Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare, a short comic play directed by Kristin Parsons. It involves an accountant named George Spelvin, who is mistaken for an actor's understudy and forced to perform in a play for which he doesn't know any of the lines. Patrick Kramer stars as George, with Bethany Champion as Meg, Tammy Sutherland as Sarah, Jenni Cadaret as Ellen and Douglas Goodman as Henry.

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.

In September, 2010, Scot Copeland - who joined Nashville Children's Theatre as producing artistic director in 1985 - did an interview ahead of his induction among the very first Class of First Night Honorees and we are happy to share some 'Scot stories,' straight from the horse's mouth as it were, as part of our continued remembrance of the vital role he has filled in our theater community for more than 30 years and in honor of his abiding friendship and astounding imaginative leadership of our creative community.

Ah, the 1970s - what a decade, am I right? - the perfect time period for theatrical farce, what with its polyester double-knit slacks, soft and silky Nik-Nik shirts, some swell television sitcoms and the rise of entertainment conglomerates to gobble up the so-called 'little guys' in order to allow commercialism to run amok and for the notion of selling out one's soul for personal gratification and financial gain to become part of the American way of life. Let's face it: Isn't all that what has led to and created the current climate of political division and personal derision?

Directed with confidence by a young director - Matthew Hayes Hunter, who was a 2013 First Night Most Promising Actor - and performed by an eager and energetic cast (led by a quartet of extraordinary actresses portraying the four Dreams and another First Night MPA [who very nearly steals the entire production right out from under everyone else onstage] in the role of James 'Thunder' Early - CFTA's Dreamgirls delights its audience from the beginning, engaging them with focused performances that come from the heart to inspire and entertain.

There is an iconic scene in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard - based on the memorable film by Billy Wilder - in which Norma Desmond returns triumphantly (in Norma's myopic view of life since the talkies spelled an end to silent pictures, in which she made her fortune with her expressive face) to Paramount studios for an impromptu meeting with Cecil B. DeMille on the set of Samson and Delilah. Impressively played by Ginger Newman in the Nashville debut of Sunset Boulevard at The Larry Keeton Theatre, Norma is beautifully clad in haute couture, generating star power and unaware that she has slipped into obscurity for the most part, her legions of fans decimated by time and the general vagaries of life.

Scot Copeland, longtime producing artistic director of Nashville Children's Theatre and one of the world's leading proponents of theater for younger audiences, died during the overnight hours of February 25 from an apparent heart attack. He is survived by his wife, Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Repertory Theatre, his two sons, many family members and countless 'chosen family' and friends all over the world.

There's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you. We're delighted to herald the return of BWW Nashville's Critics Choice with today's feature, offering up a compendium of what's available, what we recommend you see, and - in the cases of show's we've seen already - snippets of our reviews to help you make up your mind!

Taking on a stage role that was indelibly created onscreen by Erich Von Stroheim has got to be a daunting experience, but Nashville actor Randal Cooper takes on the theatrical challenge in The Larry Keeton Theatre's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, onstage in Donelson through March 5.

Kristin McCalley Landis and Tamara Todres will star in the Nashville premiere of Jenny Magnus' The Strange, produced by The Chicago Talking Machine Company at the Centennial Black Box Theater, 211 27th Avenue North, March 21-26.

In an effort to focus attention on the overwhelming need to eradicate poverty in this lifetime, Vanderbilt University Theatre will present How to End Poverty in 90 Minutes this weekend, running tonight, February 24, through Sunday, February 28, in Neely Auditorium on the VU campus in Nashville.

2015 First Night Honoree Martha Wilkinson - the winner of nine First Night Awards for outstanding lead actress in a musical - leads the Nashville Repertory Theatre cast of the Oscar- and Tony Award-winning Chicago, running March 19-April 16 at the Andrew Johnson Theater at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Chae Chaput - a native of Manchester, New Hampshire, who did her undergraduate work at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, where she earned her BA in Theater Arts with a double concentration in Acting and Technical Theater with a minor in film - is one such member of the group.