(08/07/2015) - Circle Players present the Tony Award-winning hit musical AMERICAN IDIOT, based on Green Day's GRAMMY Award-winning multi-platinum album, featuring music by Green Day, lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, and book by Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer. The show runs August 20-30, 2015 at the Tennessee State University Strange Performing Arts Center's Cox-Lewis Theater, located on Alameda Street on TSU campus). Scroll down for a sneak peek at the cast!
(07/28/2015) - More than 150 people gathered at Nashville's venerable Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre Monday night for the announcement of honorees and award winners for the 2015 First Night Honors. Preview Party celebrants were treated to a bountiful buffet of entertainment as cast members from several musicals currently on the boards or upcoming on Middle Tennessee stages performed numbers from their shows.
(07/28/2015) - Nine individuals who have taken leading roles in making live theater in Tennessee better and more magical have been named as members of the Class of 2015 Honorees for The First Night Honors, the annual celebration of all things theatrical held in Nashville every September.
(07/18/2015) - BroadwayWorld has just obtained photos from the recently buzzed about production of RENT in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Presented by the South Jackson Civic Center's Performing Arts for Children and Teens, the show has met with local religious opposition, as first reported on Director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama, Howard Sherman's blog. Check out the snapshots below!
(07/11/2015) - Nashville's acclaimed Sideshow Fringe Festival gets under way next Thursday, so what better way to get ready for this year's event than by looking back at 2014's Saturday morning and evening events, captured in a series of photographs by Wesley Duffee-Braun. If 2014 looked this good...can you imagine what 2015 is gonna look like?
(07/10/2015) - Nashville's acclaimed Sideshow Fringe Festival gets under way next Thursday, so what better way to get ready for this year's event than by looking back at 2014's Friday night events, captured in a series of photographs by Wesley Duffee-Braun. If 2014 looked this good...can you imagine what 2015 is gonna look like?
(07/09/2015) - Nashville's acclaimed Sideshow Fringe Festival gets under way next Thursday, so what better way to get ready for this year's event than by looking back at 2014's opening night events, captured in a series of photographs by Wesley Duffee-Braun. If 2014 looked this good...what does 2015 have in store?
(06/25/2015) - Following last year's successful run, Cumberland County Playhouse and the Scopes Trial Festival of Dayton, Tennessee, will once again co-produce Front Page News: Dayton and the World-Famous Scopes Trial, July 17-26, presented in the famous courtroom where Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan battled in 1925.
(05/13/2015) - Cookeville High School's production of West Side Story claimed top honors - the award for Best Show of 2014/15 - last Saturday at the second annual Nashville High School Musical Theatre Awards, presented at Lipscomb University's Collins Alumni Auditorium and hosted by Melinda Doolittle.
(05/12/2015) - After wrapping up the highly-acclaimed JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT tour, which she co-starred in alongside husband Ace Young, Diana DeGarmo will lead the cast of Studio Tenn's upcoming production of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Below, check out a first look at the stage and AMERICAN IDOL veteran in costume, which she posted to Instagram just earlier today!
(04/15/2015) - Broadway triple threat Jeremy Benton adds the role of 'developing director' to his already laudable resume when he stages an upcoming industry reading of the new musical, Sweet Swing!, in New York City next week. Benton directs and choreographs the six-person musical, which has book and music by Diane Tauser (Notre Dame de Paris and Stone Cold Beauty), and tells the real story of a wartime romance during World War Two.
(03/18/2015) - In its 65th season, Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater company presents a challenging new revival of playwright William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about repressed desires and haunting recriminations: Picnic. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the cast!
(03/13/2015) - Photographer Kenn Stilger and Heavnly Perspective Photography have captured some gorgeous photographic images of Street Theatre Company's production of Memphis the Musical, which opens at Bailey STEM Middle School in Nashville tonight.
(02/24/2015) - A school receives a mysterious script about a girl who died long ago. The director disappears. A new director arrives just in time and knows all about the story of the play. In fact, she seems to know it too well. And how did she get the dead girl's ring? Are the students of Herbert Hoover High too wrapped up in miscues, awful accents, and stolen boyfriends to notice? Revenge is coming. Who will pay the price when the real world and the play collide?
(02/13/2015) - Elmer Rice's play The Adding Machine premiered on Broadway in 1923, yet it speaks to the issues of the day: mechanization, corporation, immigration, sexism and bigotry--all at the expense of the individual human being. Fast foward: 2015. Nearly 100 years later, we're still there. So says Catherine Coke, director of The Adding Machine at University School of Nashville.
(02/12/2015) - Now one of the most performed shows in America, Seussical is a fantastical, magical, musical extravaganza! Tony winners Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Lucky Stiff, My Favorite Year, Once On this Island and Ragtime) have lovingly brought to life all of our favorite Dr. Seuss characters, including Horton the Elephant, The Cat in the Hat, Gertrude McFuzz, Lazy Mayzie and a little boy with a big imagination--Jojo. The colorful characters transport us from the Jungle of Nool to the Circus Mcgurkus to the invisible world of the Whos.
(02/12/2015) - Opening Friday night in Smyrna, Sabrina Fair is the perfect show to warm those cold winter nights. Featuring a wonderful cast, beautiful period costumes of the 1950s, delightful wit, and a love story that is part Cinderella, part Oscar Wilde, and part Love Actually this is a show you don't want to miss.
(01/13/2015) - Bawdy, irreverent, perhaps even unhinged: What better way to describe Midwinter's First Night? Held Sunday night at Backstage at the Barn, the intimate cabaret theater at Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, the slightly offbeat, decidedly more casual younger sibling of The First Night Honors focused on the fun, while honoring some of Middle Tennessee's best and brightest with First Night Awards.
(01/06/2015) - Whether or not you are a sports fan for either of the professional Nashville sports teams, I'd like to be the first to prepare you for a possible sighting of a man or two performing off-Broadway with blue paint on their faces. However, these blue men aren't playing by the same rules. Let me just state the obvious, the Tennessee Titans have absolutely nothing on the Blue Man Group (BMG) returning to Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center with a new theatrical touring production. For this week only, the entirely new, high-impact visual performance will wow Nashvillians like never before in Andrew Jackson Hall. Here at BroadwayWorld Nashville, we had the chance to interview not one but two touring Blue Man professionals.
(10/13/2014) - Cocktails named after some of the show stopping musical numbers from the smash Broadway musical CHICAGO greeted the cast, crew, and guests at a post-performance party at Marti's, a bistro in the French Quarter, late Tuesday night. CHICAGO's current tour cast, headlined by Bianca Marroquin (Roxie Hart), Terra C. MacLeod (Velma Kelly), John O'Hurley (Billy Flynn in select cities), Jacob Keith Watson (Amos Hart), Roz Ryan (Matron 'Mama' Morton), and C. Newcomer (Mary Sunshine), kicked off CHICAGO's 16th U.S. Tour at the newly reopened atmospheric theatre in NOLA, the 2,736-seater Saenger Theatre along Canal Street, with a rapturous standing ovation from a packed audience earlier that evening.
(09/17/2014) - Sam Palladio (Gunnar Scott) and Chaley Rose (Zoey Dalton) from ABC's hit TV show NASHVILLE visited the Once tour at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center last night, September 16. Scroll down for photos of Palladio and Rose with tour cast members Stuart Ward (Guy) and Dani de Waal (Girl)!
(07/29/2014) - CABARET comes to the Franklin Theatre this Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 5:00pm. Directed by Sondra Morton, CABARET features Musical Direction by Jamey Green and Choreography by Lauri Gregoire. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
(07/19/2014) - Playhouse Nashville has quickly established itself in the local theatre landscape on the strength of productions described by reviewers as "wickedly funny" (SEXTAPE & OTHER STORIES), "stunning" (DEVIL SEDAN), and "devastatingly honest" (ULTRASOUND). That well-earned reputation for eliciting memorable performances from talented actors working on original material continues with the newly announced ensemble for SCARECROWS WILL NEVER SEE THE SUNSET.
(07/16/2014) - SEUSSICAL comes to the Franklin Theatre this Saturday and Sunday for four shows. The musical is a fantastical, magical, musical extravaganza that is fun for the whole family! BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
(06/27/2014) - The Act Too Players (ATP), Williamson County's premier training program for all youths interested in the performing arts will take the stage in June with the production of SEUSSICAL. The productions will run from July 19th and July 20th at the historic Franklin Theatre located in Downtown Franklin, Tennessee.
(11/05/2013) - Guests love the four million dazzling lights, award-winning entertainment and delicious food for which Dollywood's Smoky Mountain Christmas presented by Humana is known. However, it may be one of Dollywood's newest 'performers' which leaves them buzzing when the annual festival opens Saturday, Nov. 9.
(10/10/2013) - Beautifully staged, with lighting by Kristen Geisler, and scenic design by Josafeth Israel Reynoso Calvillo, the audience is transported back in time to become a part of something that has both good and bad, dark and light, conviction and redemption. To imagine that you can experience all of that in the span of about three hours is a feat in itself, but the Clarence Brown Theatre manages to pull it off with little trouble.
(07/17/2013) - The big buzz this summer has been about Barter Theatre's production of LES MISERABLES. Now, the already epic show will grow to larger-than-life proportions when Barter artists join The Symphony of the Mountains on one stage for two nights only. The Barter/Symphony collaboration will take place at the Toy F. Reid Eastman Employee Center in Kingsport, TN, on August 16 and 17 at 7:30pm. This is a very rare chance to hear all the gorgeous and powerful songs of 'Les Mis' backed by a full, professional orchestra. Scroll down for a first look at the cast in action!
(01/08/2013) - The world premiere of a brand-spanking new musical with Broadway in its sights, a relatively young but awe-inspiring theater company and a sparkling, witty new play about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald led the list of Tennessee's outstanding theatrical achievements in 2012 that was revealed Sunday night at Midwinter's First Night. Photographer Rick Malkin was on hand to capture the evening's highlights with his camera.
(01/07/2013) - Performances for the upcoming national tour of FLASHDANCE - THE MUSICAL, the stage adaptation of the 1983 hit film that defined a generation, begin January 1st and run through January 6 at Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall. At a recent press event, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl officially announced January 1st as FLASHDANCE day. Following the Pittsburgh engagement, FLASHDANCE will embark on a national tour to more than 25 cities in the next seven months with additional bookings to be announced soon. Check out a first look at the cast in action below!
(11/25/2012) - Carol Irvin, who has been a mainstay at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse for more than 20 years, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe,presented on Saturday, November 17, prior to curtain of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Earlier in the same week, Bralyn Stokes received the robe at Rhubarb Theater's Birds in Church, and Michael Holder and Josh Waldrep claimed it at Street Theatre Company's Miss Saigon in Concert.
(11/10/2012) - Clay Steakley, who plays the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Actors Bridge Ensemble's world premiere production of Bill Feehely's Outside Paradise, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe. Jeffrey Ellis, founder and executive producer of The First Night Honors, presented the robe to Steakley on Saturday, November 10, prior to curtain of Outside Paradise at Belmont University's Black Box Theatre.
(11/01/2012) - Ah, Halloween...the theaterati's favorite holiday (right after Tony Awards Day and, in Tennessee of course, First Night Day!)...gives everyone the opportunity to show off their inner characters and unknown doppelgangers. So how did Tennessee's theater types celebrate the day? Dress up with some place to go...
(10/12/2012) - On September 2, 2012-during the presentation of The First Night Honors-a new Nashville and Tennessee theater tradition was unveiled with the presentation of the First Night Robe. Fashioned after and inspired by the legendary Broadway Gypsy Robe, the First Night counterpart is presented to someone who is making their first appearance on a Nashville-area stage.
