Jeffrey Ellis - Page 138

Lakewood Theater Company presents its second show of the 2015 season with the classic The Philadelphia Story, beginning Friday, April 17, and running through Sunday, May 3.

For two nights only, on April 17 and 18, they will speak, sing, dance, and shape-shift their stories to life as part of GRRRLS NIGHT OUT: an all-star fundraising performance for GRRRL scholarships, to be held at the Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Avenue in Nashville.

Nashville Repertory Theatre's 2015-16 season includes "a hot Pulitzer Prize-nominated contemporary play, a famous classic, the world premiere of a new play, and a great American musical," according to producing artistic director Rene Dunshee Copeland.

Gina D'Arco and Taylor Novak will lead the cast of William Inge's Picnic, in a revival of the classic play helmed by Jeffrey Ellis, for Nashville's Circle Players, which this season celebrates its 65th year of bringing live theater to audiences throughout Middle Tennessee. Picnic will run tonight, March 27 through April 4, and will be performed at the theater at Hillsboro High School.

In its 65th season, Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater company presents an exciting and challenging new revival of playwright William Inge's seminal 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about repressed desires and haunting recriminations: Picnic. Opening tonight, March 26, at Hillsboro High School Theatre in Nashville, Picnic runs through April 4.

Members of the Nashville theater community will gather today to lay to rest - and celebrate the thriving legacy - of A.W. 'Big John' Chaffin, the founder of Music City's first professional theater company and the patriarch of one of the first families of Tennessee theater.

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five: five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. This week the spotlight shines on Jenna Pryor, who caps a peripatetic 2014-15 season with the role of Jane Porter in Arts Center of Cannon County's Disney's Tarzan the Musical, which opens tonight at the theater in Woodbury.

Today the spotlight shines on University School of Nashville's McKenna Harrington, a 16-year-old junior who debuts as Millie Owens next week in Circle Players' production of William Inge's Picnic (I'm her director, for sure, and probably not all that objective about her immense talents and spot-on instincts.

This classic tale unfolds in early 1900's as a shipwreck leaves an infant orphaned on the West African shore. The helpless baby is taken under the protection of a gorilla tribe and becomes part of their family. When he eventually encounters his first human, Jane Porter, both of their worlds transform forever.

Hitting perhaps too close to home for some and harkening back to memories best left unrecalled, while challenging audiences to examine their own lives, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman remains an emotional, visceral theatrical masterpiece. Now, through March 28, it is vividly recaptured, like so much lightening in a bottle, in a deeply affecting production from Nashville Rep, directed with finesse by Rene D. Copeland and acted by an all-star cast of Nashville performers who together create a stunningly specific place in time that somehow is timeless and universal.

Veteran actor Jay Doolittle returns to Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre this spring to reprise his role as Morrie Schwartz in the beloved play based on Mitch Albom's New York Times bestselling memoir, Tuesdays With Morrie, running March 27 - April 11.

Photographer Kenn Stilger and Heavnly Perspective Photography have captured some gorgeous photographic images of Street Theatre Company's production of Memphis the Musical, which opens at Bailey STEM Middle School in Nashville tonight.

This week the spotlight shines on Lauren Frances Johnson, who has made her mark in Music City, performing on stages all over town and sharing the remarkable talents that have won her legions of followers. Charming and gorgeous, she has stage presence to spare and tonight, as she opens as Felicia Farrell in Street Theatre Company's production of Memphis the Musical, she's destined to command the stage like nobody's business!

Oftentimes, in any college town - especially one filled with schools with impressive theater programs - there are talented students who come and go, never making much of an impact on the local scene, keeping their onstage theatrics confined to campus offerings. Not so with Belmont University senior Alie B. Gorrie.

For 40-some years now, Stephen Schwartz's Pippin, the musical about an inquisitive young man in search of meaning in his life - and, notwithstanding, the actual meaning of life - has enraptured audiences, inspired legions of theater devotees and provided any number of young men (and a not insignificant number of young women, either, we suppose) with their go-to audition song in 'Corner of the Sky.'

When you're spending all your time on the road, life can be…well, challenging…even if you are Sasha Allen, who stars as The Leading Player in the completely spectacular and altogether magical national touring company of Pippin, the Tony Award-winning Stephen Schwartz musical that's been mesmerizing audiences all over the country just as certainly as the recent Broadway revival became the talk of the Great White Way.

Today the spotlight shines on University School of Nashville's Aidan Watt, who during his four years at USN has been cast in every production - "aside from Noises Off, which I did tech for," he explains. As part of the amazing theater program at USN, Aidan's been learning from the best: Catherine Coke, whose resume includes work on all levels of professional theater, heads the program, with the estimable Jim Manning, perhaps Nashville's hardest working scenic designer (not to detract from any of the other designers in town, of course, who do great work, but Jim Manning - a 2012 First Night Star Award winner - tends to work on multiple productions for multiple companies at the same time. Whew!), heading technical and design teams.

In its 65th season, Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater company presents an exciting and challenging new revival of playwright William Inge's seminal 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about repressed desires and haunting recriminations: Picnic. Opening Thursday, March 26, at Hillsboro High School Theatre in Nashville, Picnic runs through April 4.

?After four critically acclaimed seasons, Nashville's Blackbird Theater will produce what company founders call their 'magnum opus,' the new musical Myth, set for a world premiere run July 16-26.

Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre has announced plans for its upcoming Musical Theatre Fast Track Performance Camp, as part of its summer production of the musical All Shook Up. Auditions for the show and the camp are slated for Monday, March 16, at 3 p.m. Camp dates are June 22-July 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The camp is designed for a total of 16 students, both males and females ages 12-16, to be double cast in the show. Rehearsals for All Shook Up will be held July 6-23.