Jeffrey Ellis - Page 114

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.

You can be certain that during this time of year, I'm making my way to various and sundry theaters to witness the latest Christmaslike offerings from companies large and small, but after last season's A Country Christmas, Carol - playwright/actress Lydia Bushfield's uniquely fun take on the Charles Dickens classic about the coldly restrained Ebenezer Scrooge and that whiny little cuss Tiny Tim - her newest show, now onstage at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, seemed mighty promising to kick off my season with raucous laughter and bemused sentiment.

Everyone at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre is immersed in the trappings of the season, with the opening of Lydia Bushfield's newest Christmas-themed opus, the appropriately entitled Yule, Y'all! The show opened yesterday (nowadays, openings are two-show days at ye ol' Barn, with a matinee that's sure to pack in the audiences, followed by the official opening night just a few hours later) and continues through December 26.

Opening Thursday, December 3  and running through December 20, The Larry Keeton Theatre presents the Middle Tennessee premiere of A 1940s Radio Christmas Carol - from the writers and composers of Disney's successful High School Musical - the long-awaited sequel to The 1940s Radio Hour, one of the most popular musical revues among regional and community theater companies.  

Gaslight Dinner Theatre continues its 15th Anniversary Season with its 72nd show - the regional premiere of Mr. Jingle's Christmas Clause, written and created by artistic director Greg Frey, running November 19-December 19 in Dickson at Freed-Hardeman University's Renaissance Center.

Jessika Malone directs Actors Bridge Ensemble's 20th Anniversary Season's upcoming production of Jennifer Haley's The Nether, opening December 4 at the new Actors Bridge Studio at the Darkhorse Chapel, 4610 Charlotte Avenue (entrance on 47th Avenue).

Nashville Ballet returns this year - for the eighth consecutive year - with one of Music City's most beloved holiday traditions: Paul Vasterling's Nashville's Nutcracker, running December 5-23  at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall. Due to popular demand, this year's production will feature a record-setting number of performances, giving audiences a grand total of 13 performances from which to choose.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project presents its first-ever holiday season offering, Ginna Hoben's The Twelve Dates of Christmas, for a limited, seven-performance run at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre December 4-13. Described as a 'comic romp' and a 'side-splitting' one-woman play, The Twelve Dates of Christmas stars Nashville actress Rebekah Durham in the role of Mary.

With the end of semester quickly approaching, even college actors are immersing themselves in study in preparation for finals - and Vanderbilt University's Nick Mecikalski is certainly no exception. But, somehow, Nick managed the time to answer our questions and to give us a glimpse into his theatrical life on the Nashville campus of Vanderbilt University, a place he's made quite the name for himself in productions as varied as Metamorphoses, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado About Nothing and Wit.

Directors and producers in the Nashville region are seeking actors for upcoming productions of The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Sunset Boulevard, Pull-Tight Theatre's production of Osborne and Eppler's Southern Fried Funeral  and Robertson County Players' The Man Who Came to Dinner - and there are upcoming national auditions for the tour of Newsies, set for Nashville on December 11. 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.

How wonderful is it that a song can usher in all sorts of memories - perhaps of your first kiss, driving in a car along a dusty country road, or of people once-loved, still-loved, who are no longer a part of your life - to flood your mind, fill your heart and to transport you, as if by magic, to some earlier time? I love that feeling, which we in the theater are subject to far more often than regular folk, thanks to the music that underscores our dramatic lives and which allows everyone onstage, offstage, backstage - in whatever stage of life - to indulge in the play of 'make believe.'

Thomas Harton has come a long way since his high school days in Nashville - and you can be certain that once he graduates from Oklahoma City University, he'll be going even further.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Gimme a chorus line of gorgeous girls with gams up to here, a tap-dancing mob of darkly handsome wise guys, a serious lady of the theater whose teeth marks may be found all around a stage set - place them amid a whimsical and altogether unbelievable plot as thin as the best of the old-time movie musicals, complete with a score of tuneful hits from the jazz age, then throw 'em a laugh-out-loud funny script by Woody Allen - and I am in musical theater nirvana.

Reprising a Music City holiday tradition - while providing plenty of laughs for Black Friday - Nashville Repertory Theatre brightens the season with its A Christmas Story, opening November 27, at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theater at Tennessee Performing Arts Center and running through December 20.

Thus, we are happy to present the return of one 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. Something's missing? That's an easy fix: just send us a message here, on Facebook, or by email at jeffreyellis37215@att.com.

Might I offer some perhaps unsolicited advice? If you are dreading the upcoming holidays - Thanksgiving is just under three weeks away and Christmas is fast on its heels - and the typical upheaval precipitated by a trip 'over the river and through the woods' into the bosom of your family's particular brand of dysfunction, perhaps taking in a performance of ACT 1's production of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County would help you to gain some much-needed perspective. Because, trust me, your family (no matter how off-the-rails they may be at any given moment) can only compare favorably to the extended Weston clan of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

Caroline Davis' tour-de-force performance as American poet Emily Dickinson distinguishes the current production of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst - onstage through November 22 at The Filming Station Downtown, in a delightful revival helmed by veteran director Melissa Carrelli - and, clearly, is reason enough to make seeing the show an absolute must for theater devotees.

Leading the cast are three stage veterans who have been delighting local audiences for years: Debbie Kraski, Dietz Osborne and Layne Sasser, three names that are sure to attract the attention of theater-goers in the Nashville area. They agreed to take on our Friday Five questions in anticipation of tonight's opening, giving answers we feel certain will encourage you to go see them in their latest onstage adventure.