Jeffrey Ellis - Page 78

Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts presents the regional premiere of A Time to Kill, based on the bestselling novel by John Grisham and the 1996 film starring Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson, opening Friday night, March 24 and running through April 2.

My Father's War: A Story of Conflict, Survival, and Grace. adapted and performed by 2014 First Night Honorees Carol Ponder and Robert Kiefer from the WWII memoir Ponder Anew, written by Lt. Herschel Ponder, will be performed Fridays and Saturdays, March 24, 25, 31 and April 1 and Sunday, March 26, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 3100 Murfreesboro Pike in Nashville.

Daniel DeVault's taut, focused direction and consistent performances from his ensemble of actors are the hallmarks of Circle Players' latest show in their 2016-17 season - Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Clybourne Park - now onstage, appropriately and significantly at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, named for one of Nashville's most venerated civil rights leaders through April 2.

Featuring a quintet of charming and engaging players, under the deft and focused direction of Everett Tarlton, Seeing Stars in Dixie (which winds up a month-long run at The Barn this coming Sunday, March 19) is the kind of laugh-out-loud funny that only comes from the heart, as it relates the story of a group of people in Natchez, Mississippi, circa 1956, who are caught up in all the hoopla and hullabaloo of a movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, being made right over yonder. It's based in fact: Taylor, Clift, Lee Marvin, Eva Marie Saint and all the accompanying Hollywood types came to Natchez to film Raintree County, a Southern gothic tale that transformed the sleepy, small town into a veritable beehive of Tinsel Town talk and celebrity hijinks.

Cast members - the hardest working man in Music City show business Patrick Kramer and the outrageously funny Katie Bruno - from director Jason Tucker's cast found time from their rigorous rehearsal schedule to take on our Friday 5 (+1) questions to offer us some insider information about the show and what makes them tick, after a theatrical fashion.

Today, three members of director Daniel DeVault's cast - Chandra J. Walton, M. Caroline Prince and Ethan Treutle - offer some insight into their creative process in Friday 5 (+1): Clybourne Park.

We were finally able to track him down and ask him to help our readers learn more about him via our Getting to Know… feature while he was on a trip to Ireland where he represented NCT at an international conference on theater for younger audiences. In fact, Nolan's been so peripatetic since settling down in Nashville and starting his job on February 1, that he answered our queries from the airport in Belfast…

Make no bones about it: the mind and imagination of playwright Tony Kushner (whose Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is playing at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre, in a new production of from ACT 1) is nothing like yours or mine or that guy sitting at the table by the window at your neighborhood Starbucks, tip-tap-typing away at his laptop in hopes of capturing lightning in a bottle with his words or that woman waxing philosophical about the current political climate in this country while recapping the latest happenings on her favorite TV series for some obscure website.

Woodland Entertainment founder Jeff Swafford will bring his new play Crazy All These Years from the screen to the stage of Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater April 13-22, starring Cinda McCain, Michael Adcock, Jennifer Richmond and Daniel Hackman.

In the quarter century since Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes first exploded upon the theatrical scene, much has changed about society's response to AIDS, homosexuality, politics and life in general. But, perhaps most startling has been the way in which things have remained the same during the 25-plus years since its 1991 debut on a stage in California.

Daniel DeVault directs the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama - and 2012 Tony Award winner for best play - Clybourne Park, running March 17-April 2, at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theatre in a new production from Circle Players.

Thomas Wagner stars in the iconic role of Nathan Detroit in the show that runs this weekend and he managed to squeeze some time into his hectic schedule to answer our queries and become the newest subject of this week's High School Drama.

Chaffin's Barn is mounting a veritable "Clash of the Playwrights" as the creative team at Nashville's iconic dinner theater casts a net for "innovative, never before produced comedy and mystery scripts."

Veteran Nashville actress Linda Speir will make her Larry Keeton Theatre debut as the matriarch in Del Shores' Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will, the next production on the stage of the Donelson theater, running April 20-May 6.

Studio Tenn promises to be 'back at it again with an all new line up of original works, literary masterpieces, powerful dramas and Broadway classics' for the 2017-18 season, which is revealed this week.

Hume-Fogg senior Bryce Poole, who plays Benny, is among the ensemble of student actors taking on the challenge of the iconic musical by Jonathan Larson under the direction of First Night Honoree Daron Bruce and his longtime artistic collaborator Lisa Forbis. As curtain time looms in just a few hours, Bryce shared some of his memories of his life in the theater to date and talked about the people and shows that figure prominently in his own life, lived theatrically, in today's edition of High School Drama.

Tickets go on sale Friday for the Nashville debut of Beautiful - The Carole King Musical, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning Broadway hit about the early life and career of the legendary and groundbreaking singer/songwriter Carole King, that makes its Music City debut with a one-week engagement at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall May 23-28.

Startling, stunning and evocative performances by an ensemble of Nashville actors performing at the top of their game in an altogether effective and moving production of a contemporary classic: that's what audiences are likely recalling now - hours, days, weeks - after experiencing the latest artistic achievement from Studio Tenn. Following up the opening of their 2016-17 season -  a critically lauded revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita, which launched the annual Broadway series at Tennessee Performing Arts Center - Studio Tenn presents another Broadway-worthy reiteration in the form of Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man.

Distraction Theatre Company's sophomore season boasts comedy, murder and an original science fiction double-feature, according to details announced at Saturday night's reveal party at The Red Arrow Gallery in East Nashville.

The world premiere production of the latest comedy from Lori Fischer - Greener Pastures - opens in Crossville at Cumberland County Playhouse on Friday, March 10, running through April 21.