Jeffrey Ellis - Page 146

Today's spotlight falls upon Michael Bouson and Joe Correll, two of the loveliest people I've ever known. Creative and imaginative, they brought their hilarious hijinks to the stage when they founded The Avante Garage Comedy Repertory Theatre, a comedy improv/musical theater company that set stages afire throughout Music City, introducing some of the region's best-loved performers to audiences who still remember every joke, every laugh and every song. Now living in Los Angeles, where they are both involved in television production, Michael and Joe made a triumphant return to Nashville in late August, when they were saluted at The First Night Honors of 2014.

Among those young actors is Lipscomb University's Jonah Jackson, a native of Shelbyville, Tennessee, and a candidate for a bachelor of fine arts with an acting major. A 2014 First Night Most Promising Actor, among his many credits are Lord Farquaad in Shrek: the Musical (Lipscomb University and Circle Players), Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (Springhouse Theatre) and A-Rab in West Side Story (Lipscomb University). Just over the horizon for 2015, he has the roles of General Genghis Khan Schmitz in Seussical and Gerry in Dancing at Lughnasa on tap.

It's back and it's this Sunday, January 11: Midwinter's First Night, aka The First Night Honors' misbehavin' younger sibling, will feature fun, frivolities, special performances, food and drinks, the presentation of The BWW Nashville Awards and, of course, the awarding of First Night's Best of 2014 honors. Sly, irreverent and slightly decadent, Midwinter's First Night will be held at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Nashville's iconic theatrical venue since 1964.

Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: Justin Boyd, Amber Boyer and Maryanna Clarke.

What better way to commemorate the 100th birthday of one of the nation's most storied theaters - The Shubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut - than with a special video starring the national company of Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the first show to take the stage in the theater's centennial year?

This week's spotlight focuses on JJ Rodgers, one of Music City's finest actresses, who opened this week in Hendersonville's Actors Point Theater Company's holiday season offering of It's A Wonderful Life, A Live Radio Play, directed by 2014 First Night Star Award winner Greg Wilson.

Today's spotlight falls upon Chambers Stevens, who defines the word "multi-hyphenate." (Seriously, look in a dictionary-they still make dictionaries, don't they?-and you'll find his headshot next to the word.) He is an actor-director-playwright-acting coach-producer-consultant-husband-and-father. And in 2012, he was recognized as a First Night Honoree for the role he has played in the development of theater in Tennessee.

Our series continues this week with our first home-schooled actor, the lovely and talented Kaila Wooten, an amazingly talented and remarkably poised teenager who has been on stages throughout Middle Tennessee for much of her life and in 2013 was named a First Night Honors Most Promising Actor.

One needn't be clairvoyant to sense that Delaney Amatrudo is destined for stardom; that's been evident, at the very least, since she was a middle schooler. For Nashville area audiences who have been lucky enough to see her live and onstage, it's very obvious that she possesses that ethereal quality which makes her stand out in any crowd, that is especially noticeable when she is onstage, and which burns brightly regardless of the situation.

Why do you do theater? We've been putting that question to members of the Nashville theater famiy for the past month to find out what it is that motivates creative types to pursue an illusory and challenging career, while for others the theater gives them a creative avocation that helps keep them sane. Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce three more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: John Silvestro, Carolyn German and John Mauldin-or as we like to call them, "Two Johns and a German."

Myra Stephens has had a busy week, as is wont to happen when tech week descends upon a production, so she can be forgiven for not completely understanding the five questions that comprise our Friday Five, a regular feature designed to introduce members of Tennessee's theater community to the world at-large.

The talent pool is deep here, a fact exemplified by today's young actor featured in HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA: Jess Darnell, an 18-year-old senior at Nashville's Montgomery Bell Academy, who graduates next spring after already amassing an impressive theatrical resume.

Lindy Pendzick and Greg Pendzick, who were resident company members at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse from 2010-13, are now co-cruise directors and headlining performers on the American Empress riverboat with the American Queen Riverboat Company.

Among the leading students in the Fernandez and Baker-led Lipscomb theater program is Tyler Russell, a native of Vancouver, Washington, who has made an impact on local stages, starring as Marius in Lipscomb University Theatre's acclaimed production of Les Miserables in Fall 2013 and as Tony in the company's 2014 fall musical West Side Story.

While the Renaissance Players' mounting might be a little rough around the edges, there's still plenty to recommend the show if you're in need of some Christmas cheer. Directed by Jon Kopischke, with choreography by Alaina Deaver and musical direction by SharonTaylor, Irving Berlin's White Christmas features Jarrod Clark, Zane Jordan, Amanda Mollehour and Tawny Frey as the leading quartet of showbiz types (along with the showstopping Linda Sue Runyeon, who delivers some of the night's best moments) who breathe life into the libretto.

Inspired by all the seasonal festivities that abound, we asked people in the theater community to share their favorite things to see onstage during the run-up to Christmas…

Today, in our third installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce you to three more members of the Nashville theater family: Patrick James, April Hardcastle-Miles and Matthew Hayes Hunter. Our questions are fairly basic and to the point: Why do you do theater? And why do you choose Nashville, perhaps best known as the home of country music, as your home base?

Two Guys and a Christmas Tree brings the holiday season to Dickson in the persons of Nick Fair, Michael J. Parker, Marilyn Whitehead Fair and Jenny Norris-Light, a quartet of capable actors and wonderful singers who provide a soundtrack for your seasonal celebrations in a sprightly holiday diversion directed by Greg Frey.

Finding it difficult to get into the holiday spirit? Studio Tenn has the perfect antidote to the grey, cloudy and wet days of early December in Nashville: It's A Wonderful Life-the company's production of the stage adaptation of the iconic holiday film. If it doesn't put you in the right frame of mind, then we suspect nothing will.

As time-and the fates-would have it, Gina D'Arco is back again! With today's feature, if memory serves, Gina is the first performer to do two Friday Fives for us. Have her answers changed? Just as her life has changed, so has her perspective, so of course you're going to learn something new about the young woman who opens tonight as Mary Hatch Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, Springhouse Theatre Company's holiday season offering, running December 5-14.