Jeffrey Ellis - Page 36

Molly Yeo began dancing at four years old, while living in North Carolina - moving overseas with her family as an adolescent, where she trained in traditional Indonesian dance, subsequently studying internationally in Jakarta, Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand. Returning to the states for high school, she trained at the Ballet School of Chapel Hill and with Duke University's dance department, ultimately performing with the Chapel Hill Dance Theater and appearing in Carolina Ballet's production of Giselle.

Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for November 5, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Macy Medford's had a pretty remarkable time while studying at Belmont University. A graduate of Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas, she came to Nashville as part of the Class of 2019 of the school's renowned musical theatre program at Belmont, where she continues to grow as a performer, but perhaps more importantly as an individual with her sights firmly focused on the future.

Michael Dunaway's senior year at Nashville's Hume-Fogg Academic High School's has indeed been a busy one for the young song-and-dance man who this week opens in his school's staging of Disney's Newsies, one of the most-often produced shows of the 2018-19 season. Playing the musical's iconic leading man Jack Kelly, Dunaway leads off his final year as HFA's leading man with one of the most coveted roles in contemporary musical theater.

What better way to leave behind the turmoil of the modern world than by indulging in a bright, shiny new musical burnished with the warm glow of nostalgia and featuring a score by the inimitable Irving Berlin? We can't imagine anything more fun - or more timely, for that matter - than a couple of hours or more spent in the audience of Cumberland County Playhouse to experience the company's latest musical treat: Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn.

Patriq James' graceful portrayal of Jesus Christ in Lipscomb University Theatre's production of Godspell - now onstage in Collins Alumni Auditorium on the school's Nashville campus - shines like a beacon in the very center of the show, providing the very heart of every story told by director Scott Baker's 17-person cast. But if James provides the show's heart, it is perhaps the members of Baker's ensemble, which includes a deft blending of experienced student actors with an assortment of newcomers to their company, who provide its soul.

For Catherine Birdsong, the animated film version of The Little Mermaid - the 1989 Disney musical fantasy based on the story of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen - was the first movie she remembers ever seeing in a darkened cinema and it continues to elicit memories, to reverberate in her heart, particularly now that she finds herself in rehearsal for the debut of the stage musical at Nashville Children's Theatre.

Bradley Brown has been named managing editor of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival and will be responsible for the administrative and operational management of NSF and will oversee the its marketing, development and accounting.

Lipscomb University Theatre unveils its latest production - a play that started out as a college senior project - which depicts the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in a fun-filled, creative new staging of John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz's Godspell. Coinciding with homecoming festivities on the Nashville campus, Godspell stars Nashville professional actor Patriq James as Jesus in performances November 2-11, along with an ensemble of Lipscomb University student actors.

Hillsboro High School's Tim Russell is deep into tech week with his castmates for their upcoming production of Bertolt Brecht's The Causasian Chalk Circle, which opens Thursday night, November 1, and is presented by The Hillsboro Players under the direction of Will Butler and Kristin Moon.

Very few actors can boast the resume, replete with some of the most iconic roles in musical theater, of Hume-Fogg Academic High School's Ava Locknar. Now a senior in Daron Bruce's and Lisa Forbis' renowned musical theatre program at the school, Ava's been at home on Broadway - albeit Nashville's Broadway - for four years, although it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to envision her on the Great White Way, taking on more musical theater challenges.

Another in the long line of impressive talents who are part of the legacy of musical theater at Nashville's Belmont University, Maggie Hutchison claims the spotlight once more in this semester's eagerly anticipated production of Side Show, in which she is one of two actresses cast in the role of Daisy Hilton.

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 29, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Forget about those whiny, cry-baby Walking Dead fans and the increasing din of their lamentations regarding the imminent demise of Rick Grimes from their universe and instead focus your attention and horror film-inspired energies on Evil Dead, The Musical - a wickedly wild and ridiculously off-kilter send-up of the genre - now onstage in a terrifically entertaining, if uneven, production from Radical Arts, the little theater company who, for all intents and purposes, can.

Thirty years after its Broadway premiere - and just two-and-a-half years since its last run at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center - Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera returns to Music City in celebration of that momentous anniversary with another stand in Andrew Jackson Hall, replete with all the firepower and starpower one so readily associates with the production. And Nashville aduiences once more respond with rapt attention and thunderous applause, almost as if they are witnessing the Phantom's exploits for the very first time.

Part contemporary fairy tale/part modern day parable about lost love, missed chances and the cruelty of fate, Brooklyn: The Musical, is given a startlingly good production by Nashville's Street Theatre Company, with strong direction by Bakari King (the much-in-demand peripatetic - and multi-hyphenated - actor/singer/director/choreographer/producer/educator) and the consistently impressive performances by an ensemble of nine actors who bring the show to life with palpable vitality and remarkable commitment.

Theater people love to talk - especially about other theater people. So it should come as no surprise that it was during a recent conversation with Nashville theater choreographer extraordinaire Tosha Pendergrast that the name of Ravenwood High School's Kelly Whitlow came up.

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 22, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Fog comes billowing out over the footlights, bringing with it a pervasive sense of foreboding that sets the tone for the next three hours of what is - without any fear of exaggeration - the most satisfying theatrical experience of 2018. Eye-poppingly gorgeous, with a design aesthetic that's perfectly wedded to the source material provided by composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler, and featuring some of the most electrifying performances we've ever witnessed at Cumberland County Playhouse (where they know a thing or 100 about staging musicals), Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is spectacular.

Quentin Oliver Lee, the man behind the mask - the dynamic singer/actor leads the national company of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, now on tour throughout the United States - first stepped onstage in the iconic role during its Memphis run earlier this year and he freely admits that the experience left him eager to return to Tennessee to perform on the stage of Nashville's Andrew Jackson Hall.