Jeffrey Ellis - Page 64

Jill McMillan, current corporate relations manager at Boston's Institute of Contempory Art, has been named the next executive director of The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville (ABC). She is scheduled to take the reins at ABC on June 28 after completing her role at ICA.

Feeling the urge to let your imagination run wild, your spirit to soar or to just leave the world in which you live and go on an adventure? Sounds like a trip to the theater is in order! Luckily, companies all over the Volunteer State have been hard at work, creating new productions to transform and to transport, shows that will entertain you this summer. That's where THE NASHVILLE THEATER CALENDAR comes in handy: Peruse our listings every week to find out what shows you should see!

Musical theater lends itself to the "high concept" approach, to be certain, even if it doesn't always add to the overall success of a production. Case in point: Street Theatre Company's current revival of Stephen Schwartz's Pippin, onstage through June 25 at Holy Trinity Community Church in Nashville, which despite a cast of theatrical heavy hitters seems rather lost in a befuddling miasma of forced social media fun and games.

Terrence McNally's critically acclaimed 1995 Broadway hit Love! Valour! Compassion! is being revived in Nashville for a limited run at Music Valley Event Center. Produced in cooperation with Murfreesboro-based nonprofit Radical Arts, Love! Valour! Compassion! will offer patrons dinner and show-only options for its July 7-23 performances.

Among such actors is Douglas Waterbury-Tieman, a graduate of the Belmont University Musical Theatre program, now living in Inwood, New York City, with his wife Annabelle Fox (also a Belmont grad and a recent subject of this series), whom he met in school in Nashville.

What's a stage manager? What do they do? What's their job? Seriously. Perhaps no job in the theater is as hard to define as that of a production stage manager and it's that blend of mystery, fear and total dependence that makes actors, directors, crew members, producers - you name it! - hold a really great stage manager in total awe and to revile someone who is (how do you say it, without offending anyone?) less than stellar in their position?

'Over-the-top' and 'larger-than-life' are but two of the descriptive phrases that may be used in reference to both director Jason Lewis and his latest theatrical project Reefer Madness the Musical - and, in both instances, they are equally justified. In all honesty, who else better than he to helm a production of the thoroughly madcap and deliciously campy musical now onstage at Darkhorse Theater through this weekend as the final show of ACT 1's 2016-17 season?

What's a stage manager? What do they do? What's their job? Seriously. Perhaps no job in the theater is as hard to define as that of a production stage manager and it's that blend of mystery, fear and total dependence that makes actors, directors, crew members, producers - you name it! - hold a really great stage manager in total awe and to revile someone who is (how do you say it, without offending anyone?) less than stellar in their position?

It's yet another opening night at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, as co-directors Jamie London and Noah Rice unveil the company's latest: Mary Poppins the Musical. Featuring a cast of more than 40 actors, it's the last production of The Keeton's 2016-17 season.

Houses were packed to capacity, Broadway World called it 'one of the year's most unforgettable performances,' and audiences have been begging for more ever since and now it's coming back by popular demand: Ryan Bowie stars in Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre June 30-July 15.

Feeling the urge to let your imagination run wild, your spirit to soar or to just leave the world in which you live and go on an adventure? Sounds like a trip to the theater is in order! Luckily, companies all over the Volunteer State have been hard at work, creating new productions to transform and to transport, shows that will entertain you this summer. That's where THE NASHVILLE THEATER CALENDAR comes in handy: Peruse our listings every week to find out what shows you should see!

Cumberland County Playhouse officially launches summer in Crossville on June 16, with a spectacular new production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Based on the Academy-Award winning animated feature, the stage version includes all of the memorable songs from the animated film like "Be Our Guest," and the beloved title song, plus a few new songs written especially for the Broadway musical.

As if Nashville didn't have enough going on this Sunday, June 11, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center will host a viewing party for the 71st Annual Tony Awards on the stage of James K. Polk Theater at 7 p.m. 

Nashville's Artist's Cooperative Theatre 1 (ACT 1) will kick off its 29th season this fall with a production of Delia Ephron and Nora Ephron's Love, Loss and What I Wore, playing the iconic Darkhorse Theater October 6-21. The five plays and their directors, which make up the new season, were revealed to the opening night audience of ACT 1's 2016-17 season closing production of Reefer Madness the Musical, which runs through June 24.

Back in the day, theatrically speaking, there was something you could always count on in Nashville: some of the very best (if not the best) summer musicals could be found at one venue - Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre. All manner of classic stage musicals were staged at the Barn over the years, ranging from Oklahoma! and Camelot to The Robber Bridegroom and Singin' in the Rain, and they remain vividly etched in memory, images of well-respected actors plying their trade in iconic shows and performing legendary musical scores we still revere as some of the best shows we've ever seen.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! Welcome to Friday, June 9, 2017 - we're awfully glad to have you here! It's a big weekend in Nashville, maybe the biggest ever, thanks to the perfect storm of events and celebrations all across the region. It's CMA Music Festival weekend, Bonnaroo is pulsating some miles down the road (taking most of the attendees through Music City on their way to Manchester) and the Nashville Predators take on a team from Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final's sixth game on Sunday night at Bridgestone Arena.

Studio Tenn announced today that Jake Speck will leave his position as Managing Director in August, to assume the executive director position with A.D. Players, a professional theatre company in Houston, Texas.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's Thursday, June 8, 2017 - which means it's #theaterThursday (seriously, you could help a guy out here and make that hashtag a #thing) and your latest opportunity to live life dramatically! What better way to do that than by making plans to get yourself to the theater and see a show, live onstage…

Jaymes Campbell directs the latest from Nashville-based KB Productions - The Water's Edge by Theresa Rebeck - running Friday, June 30 through July 8 at The Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Pike, Nashville.

Kicking off Season #2 for Woven Theatre is the original Uncanny by Miles Gatrell, running June 29-July 9 at the Belmont Little Theater beneath Hail Hall: Imagine if Wes Anderson directed the Buffy Cast in an X-Men movie.