Jeffrey Ellis - Page 110

Members of the theater family flung far and wide - or at least as far as trains, planes, ships and automobiles can take them - are mourning the sudden passing last Friday of Ron McIntyre Fender, the man known as the "Saint of Chattanooga" for his efforts on behalf of the homeless and beloved by theater folk all over the world for his warm, welcoming and abiding friendship from his days as an actor, director, stage manager, company manager and artistic director.

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

There's nothing like a good musical revue - replete with well-chosen songs, performed by a talented coterie of professional performers who are ably supported by a cast of fresh-faced youngsters showing off their burgeoning talents in concert with their more seasoned counterparts - and The Collective (Nashville's newest theatrical endeavor aka The Music City Theatre Collective) certainly delivers the goods with the debut of Showstoppers, presented this weekend at St. Philip's Episcopal Church's Dimmick Hall in Donelson.

Succinctly put, Susannah Smith White is a force of nature, the total embodiment of the adage about 'great things coming in small packages.' In fact, if the phrase hadn't become a cliche so long before her birth, I'd wager it was first uttered with her in mind.

Dealing with the heretofore difficult to discuss subjects of teenaged depression and suicide, 7 Ways to Sunday opens up a necessary dialogue that is sure to save lives (regardless of how melodramatic that sounds, could one come to any other realization after experiencing the altogether life-changing events depicted in the musical?) thanks to the brutal - yet somehow funny, moving and totally affecting - truths expressed in the latest work from Laemmel, Fritsch and the other artists who call The Theater Bug home.

Can there be a better way to capture Matilda's spirit so evocatively than in a sparkling new work for the musical theater? A musical journey through which we can chart her soulful, heartfelt ascent into a literary hierarchy in which readers can live vicariously? Matilda's forays into a fictional world of devil-may-care adventure, oftentimes aided by her gift for telekinesis or her penchant for clever tricks (like switching her father's hair oil with her mother's peroxide) - which is at once darker than other offerings of like ilk, yet somehow rather more confectionary than even the fluffiest of musical comedies - lend themselves exquisitely to Matilda the Musical, the critically lauded stage extravaganza that is somehow effervescently uplifting while remaining grounded.

Music City Theatre Collective - the brainchild of Nashville artists Curtis Reed, Jenny Norris-Light, Chase Miller and Martha Wilkinson, among others - will launch its highly anticipated and rather unique company this weekend with a series of performances designed to highlight the Collective's upcoming endeavors.

Vanderbilt University's Sadie Andros, one of the region's busiest and most acclaimed young actors - she was Psyche and Aphrodite in last fall's production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses and takes on the role of Olivia in this spring's Vanderbilt Players' production of Twelfth Night - is among those students juggling schedules while dazzling audiences with her onstage antics.

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.

Dancer. Actor. Singer. Artist. Educator. Teacher. No matter what term you use to describe her, Christen Heilman exemplifies the very best of what we've come to expect of creative people making their way, while challenging themselves creatively, through the Nashville performing community.

Today, our Friday Five spotlight is focused on Molly Breen and Jessica Theiss who last night celebrated, along with the rest of their cast and crew, opening night of White Orchard Theatre's Feels Colder Than Love, conceived by – and directed by and designed by, with video production overseen by – Irina Sundukova, playing the Black Box Theatre at Ensworth High School, in Nashville, through January 29.

News spread quickly among Nashville-area theaterati last week: Denice Hicks would be taking the stage of Belmont University's Troutt Theater to take on what could conceivably be her greatest theater challenge: Playing King Lear in the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of the Shakespeare tragedy which had opened a week earlier.

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.

Threatening weather forecasts of freezing rain, snow and otherwise wintry conditions notwithstanding, Nashville's White Orchard Theatre tonight debuts Feels Colder Than Love, premiering Thursday, January 21, at the Ensworth School Auditorium Black Box Theater, running through January 29.

LaToya Gardner adds yet another theatrical conquest to her already impressive resume: Sister Mary Clarence/Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act, the musical theater version of the Whoopi Goldberg film that has delighted audiences since its debut in 1992, inspiring one sequel (with maybe another on the way) in the process.

One of the best parts of covering and reviewing theater in one region for almost 30 years is seeing new talent emerge from among the area's younger actors. Take, for example, Ryan Garrett - a 2012 First Night Most Promising Actor and a graduate of Williamson County's Centennial High School, he now studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, a program that has encouraged him to think outside the box and which has challenged him with ever-more intense roles onstage and in the classroom.

Case in point: Today's subject of Where Are They Now?, our regular feature in which we catch-up with those people who once called Nashville home but who are now reaching for their dreams all over the creative world. Dancer Garrett Marks first came to Nashville in 2009 to study at Belmont University and, in the process, became Belmont's first student to earn a BFA in Dance, creating his own line of study when one barely seemed to exist on a campus filled to the brim with talented young people.

With his final semester of collegiate study still ahead, Millikin University student Joseph J. Bezenek is clearly looking forward, making plans for his future - but make no mistake about, the talented theater student who hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, still has his attention focused squarely on what's to come before he leaves the Millikin campus in Decatur, Illinois.

Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.

Tennesseans come from a long line of storytellers - it's in our collective DNA, it seems, what with the state being home to the National Storytelling Festival, among other things - and Chambers Stevens (the 2012 First Night Honoree who co-founded Nashville Shakespeare Festival) is no different. In fact, for generations, members of his family have entertained those around them with stories both far-fetched and resolutely true.