Growing up in a small Southern town with fewer than 1,000 people, the prevalent thoughts tend to be centered on how to get out of that stifling, archly conservative community, in order to search for the proverbial greener pastures and to find like-minded people who will make you feel more "at home" with yourself and in your own skin. While that may well be the honest-to-God true story of my youth, nonetheless it always startles me when my emotions are stirred up by a stage musical set in the years long before my birth, with a show that fairly reverberates with the heart and soul, memories and nostalgia usually associated with a trip back home.
Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, including a number of holiday season offerings to put you in the Christmas spirit, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for December 3, 2018, to help you plot your course through the first few weeks of 2019...
Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, including a number of holiday season offerings to put you in the Christmas spirit, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for December 3, 2018, to help you plot your course through the beginning of a new year...
Here's hoping you had a splendid Thanksgiving holiday weekend and that you're settling in for another action-packed season of events and shows to make Christmas 2018 sparkle even more! 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 26, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...
The infectious spirit of living life to its fullest is the message in 'Zorba,' the 1968 musical that starred Herschel Bernardi. Musical Theatre Guild's staged concert version of the musical starred Michael Kostroff in an exuberant display of hedonism that is welcomed after the tragic Borderline shooting in Thousand Oaks and subsequent fires in Southern California communities.
Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap, including a whole slew of holiday favorites, for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for November 12, 2018, to help you plot your course through next February...
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...
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...
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...
Musical Theatre Guild, the winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in the theatre, will continue their 23rd Anniversary season with Kander and Ebb's haunting musical ZORBA. The one-night-only concert will take place at Glendale's historic Alex Theatre on Sunday, November 11, 2018 at 7:00 PM.
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 15, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...
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 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...
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 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...
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 to help you plot your course...
Cumberland County Playhouse launches its 54th season in Crossville with a slate of productions that range from exciting new Broadway shows, noteworthy premieres and revivals of audience favorites.
Theater's power to transform and transport is astonishing and the capability of artists to create a sense of time and place, with words and music and theatrical wizardry to lend a tangible feeling to the experience can leave you breathless. Who'd have ever thought that such thrilling artistry, the very magic of make believe, could be so vividly expressed, so awesomely felt in two hours spent in a backwoods Southern church on a Saturday night in 1938? But that's exactly what happens in Smoke on the Mountain, Connie Ray and Alan Bailey's evocative, down-home musical that lovingly takes its audiences back home again in ways not even Thomas Wolfe may ever have imagined.
Smoke on the Mountain, a homespun musical conceived by Alan Bailey with a book by Connie Ray and musical arrangements by Mike Carver and Mark Hardwick, has enjoyed long runs in numerous theatres worldwide since its premiere in 1988. And it's also racked up some fairly significant critical praise. While both of these facts should be surprising given that the dental floss-thin plot and the Southern caricature-characters are nothing more than conduits for the long catalogue of gospel hymns that make up the bulk of the show, there's something infectious about it that leaves us willing to tap our toes and clap our hands. That's certainly true for the audience at Marietta's New Theatre in the Square on Saturday evening where patrons clapped, shouted, and offered up eager, full-bodied 'Amens' in response to Emil Thomas's lively and earnest staging of the musical.
'Something that's sure to please everyone in 2017,' is the promise of Cumberland County Playhouse producing director Bryce McDonald while announcing the upcoming season at the award-winning theatrical venue located in the hill of Tennessee.
Another summer, another year of looking for excuses to stay indoors. Luckily for you, the Houston theatre scene's got you covered. From new works to wholesome classics, swing dancing to demented puppets, there's something for everyone this year. So make plans to stay inside and consider some of the BWW Houston editors' picks for the upcoming summer season.
