Jeffrey Ellis - Page 108

Written in 1947 - and inspired by events of World War II and the true-life story of a woman who alerted authorities to her father's wartime wrong-doing - All My Sons focuses on the story of a businessman who once narrowly avoided financial ruin by shipping cracked machine parts to the military. He blames his business partner and builds an empire, but eventually his crime comes back to haunt him in Miller's riveting play, which is now considered a modern American classic.

Doubtless, there's a lot of hustling, bustling and what-not going on at Murfreesboro's Center For The Arts today as the company prepares for tonight's premiere of the musical extravaganza Dreamgirls. Directed by 2013 First Night Most Promising Actor Matthew Hayes Hunter (who may or may not answer to the name of "Matt" these days), the grand-scale production features four of the loveliest, most talented and mesmerizing leading ladies to be found on any stage, anywhere: Ra'Shaun Simon (playing Deena Jones), Brianna Booker (Lorell Robinson), Brittany Easley (Michelle Morris) and Robbyn "Vyrgo" Daniel, who plays the clarion-voiced Effie Melody White, the part made famous on Broadway by Jennifer Holliday.

Nate Eppler is, arguably, the best playwright now pursuing his art in Nashville - and with his latest work, Good Monsters, opening tomorrow night at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre, he finds himself squarely back in the spotlight. It is, after all, the world premiere production of his newest, perhaps most controversial and provocative, play.

Nashville Ballet's acclaimed Attitude series will shake up its annual performance - slated for this weekend at TPAC's James K. Polk Theatre - to feature a collaboration with Music City's world-famous Bluebird Cafe for a unique series of dances.

Nashville's Street Theatre Company launches its 11th season with Lin Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning In The Heights, the smash musical that took Broadway by storm and paved the way for Miranda's new Broadway blockbuster Hamilton. Directed by STC founding artistic director Cathy Sanborn Street, In The Heights, running March 4-20, will be her farewell production in Nashville as she and her husband, JJ Street - an integral member of the theater's creative team since its beginnings - move to Wilmington, North Carolina in March.

Dreamgirls – the Tony Award- and Oscar-winning musical by Academy Award nominee Henry Krieger and book and lyrics by Tony and Grammy Award-winner Tom Eyen – opens at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts this Friday night, running February 12 through Sunday, February 28.

Here is your opportunity to get to know USC's Salome Mergia in this week's edition of Collegiate Theatrics. Miraculously, it would seem, she found time to sit down and consider our questions - and to offer some elucidating answers - about her time at USC and how her experiences there have prepared her for the future…

Metro Parks' Theatre Program will host several classes and workshops for interested students ages 9 to 17 this spring, leading up to this summer's co-production with Music City Theatre Collective of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at the Centennial Park band shell.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of David Mamet's November (from BWW Nashville Award-winning KB Productions), Gruesome Playground Injuries (coming up as this year's production from Nashville Repertory Theatre's interns) and Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theater is looking for someone to play the iconic Sherlock Holmes in the regional premiere of Baskerville, a new Ken Ludwig comedy. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

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.

Evelyn O'Neal Brush stars in the title role of Lauren Gunderson's Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, as Tennessee Women's Theater Project continues its ninth season of provocative professional theater with the Tennessee premiere of Gunderson's play. The production opens at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater on February 19, running weekends through March 6. 

Luckily, for audiences of Towne Centre Theatre's 2016 season-opening Black Tie Broadway, an original revue conceived by director/arranger John Ray, they are offered two hours of entertainment given a luxe treatment by a 13-member cast who are having a swell time singing the best of musical theater. Consistent and confident, Ray's cast bring a plethora of showtunes to the stage of the Brentwood theater - some you'll remember from the very first note, others you may be hearing for the first time.

No matter how hackneyed and corny the script, if you have an experienced ensemble of actors who are adept at physical comedy, who have perfected their timing through years onstage and who are relatively fearless in their approach to a script (any script, most likely), chances are you can deliver a show that audiences will find delightful. That's certainly the case with If The Shoe Fits, the comedy now onstage through February 13 at Gaslight Dinner Theatre, the company in residence at Freed Hardeman University's Renaissance Center in Dickson.

Make no mistake about it: There is absolutely no way to avoid instantly liking Everett Tarlton - it's useless to even try. In fact, resistance is futile. The boy possesses so much innate charm that anyone - whether you're a director, a choreographer, an actor or even a critic - simply cannot resist him. And audiences? Those poor souls have no hope whatsoever.

Theater's next generation of actors will come from all over the globe, to be certain, but one might find an impressive concentration of artists on the campus of the University of Southern California, where the list of candidates for the Master of Fine Arts in acting rivals any group to be found anywhere. Take Adam Lebowitz-Lockard, for example. A native of Philadelphia, he was an English major at Boston University and he boasts a noteworthy resume of onstage assignments all over the country that other young actors might envy.

Wayne Kirkpatrick - the award-winning, chart-topping songwriter, one of the co-creators of the Tony Award-winning Something Rotten on Broadway, and the recipient of a special 2015 First Night Honor - will be in the spotlight today night, February 4, at Lipscomb University during An Awkward Conversation With Wayne Kirkpatrick.

The Crucible, Arthur Miller's incisive drama about the Salem Witchcraft Trials - written during the turbulent times of the Hollywood Red Scare and the oppression of the McCarthy era in American politics - premieres at Lipscomb University's Shamblin Theatre for a February 19-28 run in a joint production of Blackbird Theater and Lipscomb University Department of Theatre.

Arnold Lobel's beloved characters hop from page to stage February 13 and 20 as The Arts Center of Cannon County presented A Year With Frog and Toad, the Tony Award-nominated musical with book and lyrics by Willie Reale and music by Robert Reale.

Jaclynn Jutting directs Belmont University's Department of Theatre and Dance's spring semester-opening production of Lynn Nottage's Las Meninas, a play they contend will 'grab the attention of any audience member, of any background, opening February 19 at Belmont's Troutt Theatre.

2014 First Night Honoree – and one of Nashville's most acclaimed actresses, cabaret artists and music directors – Ginger Newman is “ready for [her] close-up,” as Norma Desmond in The Larry Keeton Theatre puts the finishing touches on their upcoming production of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Sunset Boulevard.