Jeffrey Ellis - Page 148

Charming and exuberant, Karissa is doing the whole senior year experience to the hilt, leading her classmates in their final year at one of the nation's leading high schools, and somehow finding time to pursue her passion of theater.

More importantly, perhaps, since I know where the bodies are buried-both literally and figuratively-I am provided a unique perspective on the personalities that have shaped theater in Tennessee for at least the past 30 years (I was five years old when I started in this gig). Today you will be introduced to one of the finest actors to ever walk onto a Tennessee stage via our brand new feature series…WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Our first subject is Mark Delabarre, who who spoke with us from his home in New York City.

Emma Jordan has been fated to live a life onstage. Growing up in her hometown of Dickson, she was acting on stages throughout Middle Tennessee, starring in shows at the Renaissance Center and appearing onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater. Now a senior at Ohio's Wright State University in Dayton, where she's studying musical theater, Emma has her sights set on graduation next spring and an acting career thereafter.

Today, in our second installment of Nashville Theater 101, in which we introduce members of the Nashville theater family to the larger theatrical world: Tonya Pewitt, Shawn Whitsell and Denice Hicks.

First Night Award winning playwrights Dietz Osborne and Nate Eppler's Southern Fried Funeral will be featured among productions celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse in 2015.

This week, the High School Drama spotlight falls upon the tremendously versatile Shawn Sookram from Hume-Fogg Academic High School. Having just completed a run in the school's fall production of The King and I, earlier in 2014 he gave a stunning performance as the Emcee in Cabaret.

Although it seems hard to believe, Thanksgiving is this Thursday and as we reflect on the people, places and things that have made us truly happy this year and makes us most thankful, in general, we're also considering what things theatrical for which we are especially grateful in 2014.

You will not believe it! The last time we gave you a Music City Confidential (number seven), the London Olympics were winding up, LaToya Gardner and Kevin Mead were starring in Circle Players' Aida, Maggie Richardson and Cody Rutledge were headlining Xanadu at the Arts Center of Cannon County, and Music City was caught up in Nutty Professor fever! Today marks the return of Music City Confidential and we hope you'll be feeling particularly thankful for edition number 8.

Eric L. Williams is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who calls himself "an eternal student of his craft": acting. Most recently, he was onstage in Lakewood Theatre's production of The Outsiders, but he's also performed in a wide variety of works including Oedipus Rex, Jitney, The Dance on Widow's Row, Macbeth, Fool for Love and The Face of Emmett Till. Among other recent performances, he's had roles in Life to Come, Romeo and Juliet and Pulpits. In addition to acting, Williams writes and directs stage and film projects, and when he not onstage or in front of a camera, he's a blogger, internet marketer and web developer.

Today, in Nashville Theater 101, we're happy to introduce you to three members of our family: Ashley Michelle Diggs, Tom Angland and Memory Strong. We asked our actors some very basic questions-Why do you do theater? And why do you choose Nashville as your home base? This is how they answered.

Our second spotlight of the week focuses on Abigail Davis Haggard, one of Music City's busiest actresses, who opens tonight in the Keeton Theatre's seasonal production of A Christmas Carol, the Musical, directed by Jamie London and music directed by Ginger Newman.

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's freshest 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's spotlight falls on Cumberland County Playhouse's legendary Jason Ross.

Jeremy Benton is a journeyman actor, plying his trade all over the world, proving himself the consummate song and dance man in performances in countless theaters. Clearly, the charming and talented Benton has come a long way since he was dancing in his hometown of Springfield, Tennessee.

Funny and irreverent, Chaffin's Barn's A Christmas Carol-featuring a witty new adaptation by Lydia Bushfield-gives audiences the perfect entree into the whole crazy-wonderful holiday season, replete with sentimental carols, fruitcake jokes, horrid Christmas sweaters and Warren Gore on his knees.

We kick off this new series with the enormously talented, big-voiced Harley Seger, a 16-year-old junior at Christ Presbyterian Academy, who has been onstage for half her life. A stalwart of CPA theater under the direction of Paula Flautt, earlier this spring Harley was named best actress at the first Lipscomb University High School Musical Awards.

Two weeks after conservative Tennessee voters turned the Volunteer State a deeper shade of red and some three years after I was told The Book of Mormon likely would never play the Tennessee Performing Arts Center because its plot is too outlandish, its book too profane, its tenor too irreverent, the second national touring company of the nine-time Tony Award-winning musical came to Nashville and gave audiences a much-needed jolt of electricity that elicited one of the longest, uninterrupted standing ovations I've ever witnessed in TPAC's Jackson Hall.

This week the spotlight falls on two actors who are sharing the stage in the Nashville premiere of 2012 First Night Honoree Chambers Stevens' Twain and Shaw Do Lunch, directed by veteran director Melissa Carelli: Brian Hill and Michael Roark, arguably two of Music City's finest actors, onstage together playing literary lions Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw, respectively.

It's the stuff of theatrical legend. Or perhaps it's the perfect recipe for a theatrical endeavor of legendary proportions. You must simply bring together eight of Nashville's finest actresses under the direction of a man who is helping to change the face of local theater with his inventive, imaginative original works. Then give them two noteworthy scripts from the late 20th century and place them in a rehearsal hall to prepare for public consumption

Let's be clear from the very start: Ryan Bowie gives a tour de force performance as the leading 'lady' in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, now playing in theotherspace at the Roxy Regional Theatre in Clarksville for only three more performances through Tuesday, November 18.

MAS, aka Erin Parker, Cori Laemmel, Melodie Madden Adams, Laura Matula and Megan Murphy Chambers will take to the Belcourt stage to present their latest holiday cabaret, which follows in a series of critically acclaimed and audience lauded cabaret shows from the five-woman group.