Ashley Wolfe News

Lerner and Loewe's classic Broadway musical My Fair Lady - based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion - opens tomorrow night at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, featuring Erica Patterson (and her understudy Ashley Wolfe, who takes on the iconic role for three performances) as Eliza Doolittle, surrounded by a bevy of Nashville's finest leading men, including Cavender Lane, Elliott Winston Robinson, Chris Cavin, Austin Jeffrey Smith and George Hardimon IV.

Erica Patterson takes on the iconic role of Eliza Doolittle in the upcoming production of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, running February 16-March 4 at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson. Cavender Lane will play the supercilious Henry Higgins, with Chris Cavin as Colonel Pickering and Elliott Winston Robinson as Alfred P. Doolittle in the revival, directed by veteran Nashville director (and current senior contributing editor to BroadwayWorld.com/Nashville) Jeffrey Ellis.

A capacity crowd filled The Keeton to witness the no-holds-barred evening, hosted by Julia Marie Nettles, Jenna Pryor, Austin Jeffrey Smith and Taylor Tracey. Arron Holman worked the crowd during the evening to provide insight for the coming theatrical season in Nashville.

First Night's Top Ten of 2017 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater - were revealed tonight during a live Facebook broadcast at 7:30 p.m. (CST), with Actor's Bridge Ensemble and Studio Tenn/TPAC leading the nods in this year's listing of categories.

First Night's Top Ten of 2017 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater - will be revealed tonight during a live Facebook broadcast at 7:30 p.m. (CST).

Erica Patterson will take on the iconic role of Eliza Doolittle in the upcoming production of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, running February 16-March 4 at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson. Cavender Lane will play the supercilious Henry Higgins, with Chris Cavin as Colonel Pickering and Elliott Robinson as Alfred P. Doolittle in the revival, directed by veteran Nashville director (and current senior contributing editor to BroadwayWorld.com/Nashville) Jeffrey Ellis.

Austin Jeffrey Smith, Taylor Tracey, Jenna Pryor and Julia Nettles will share the stage as co-hosts of 2017 Midwinter's First Night, set for Sunday, January 8, 2017, at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson.

Austin Jeffrey Smith, Taylor Tracey, Jenna Pryor and Julia Nettles will share the stage as co-hosts of 2017 Midwinter's First Night, set for Sunday, January 8, 2017, at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson. Midwinter's First Night is the annual presentation of First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis' First Night's Top Ten of 2017 and the announcement of winners of the BWW Nashville Awards, voting for which continues through the end of December.

As challenging a work of theatrical artistry that you could possibly conceive of, Parade affords BUMT students a sublime opportunity in pursuit of excellence in a production that vociferously demands to be seen and experienced. It is one of the year's best musicals in a Nashville theatrical season that has boasted one after another significant stage triumphs, with two leading performances that are stunning in their complexity and passionate delivery.

Two Broadway veterans join with a group of seven of Tennessee's most enduring, influential and outstanding theater artists to comprise the Class of 2016 First Night Honorees, who were revealed Monday night during the annual First Night preview party, hosted by First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis.

2015 First Night Honoree Martha Wilkinson directs - with musical direction by Tim Fudge, and choreography by Curtis Reid and Lauri Gregoire - the first collaboration from Music City Theatre Collective and Metro Parks Theatre Department of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, running at the Centennial Park Bandshell June 17-July 2.

Although the calendar tells us we're still in the spring season, things are quickly heating up in Nashville - theatrically speaking - and theater-goers have a plethora of shows coming up from which to choose, including some summer musicals that are sure to set feet a-tapping and a classic drama that's sure to provoke more thought and discussion than perhaps ever before.

Summertime is here, what with Memorial Day and all that it encompasses, and we can think of no better seasonal activity than taking in some local theater. No matter where you are in the Volunteer State, Tennessee theater companies are ready and willing to help transport you to a different world, another time and place where your life can be is transformed magically on a stage very near you!

Britt Byrd takes on the challenging role of Carnelle Scott - and Nashville photographer Jenny Petit Steiner has the pictures to prove it - in The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, running at the Donelson theater April 14-30 - the first presentation of a non-musical at The Keeton in quite some time, according to producer Jamie London.

Nashville audiences this weekend are treated to a unique opportunity insofar as In The Heights is concerned: two stunning and startling, yet somehow altogether different, productions of Miranda's first masterpiece (you young people who are caught up in the specter of Hamilton have this earlier work to thank for your newfound enthusiasm for musical theater) to be inspired by - two shows that are almost alarmingly good and amazingly performed. Daron Bruce and Lisa Forbis' cadre of young performers at Nashville's Hume Fogg Academic High School will deliver their rendition of In The Heights for only one more performance (tonight, on Nashville's Broadway, is the last of three shows), while Street Theatre Company's founding artistic director Cathy Street bids farewell to her adopted hometown of ten years with her beautifully directed staging at Bailey Middle School, which opened last night for the first of three weekends of performances.

Today, we introduce you to four cast members from In The Heights - Lipscomb University's Bekah Purifoy, Belmont University's Chris D. Lee and Arik Vega, and one of the newest members of the Nashville theater community, Ashley Wolfe. Purifoy is a 2015 First Night Most Promising Actor, while Lee and Vega are members of the 2016 Class. Wolfe electrified the audience with her performance at Midwinter's First Night in January.

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.

Theatrical surprises and sneak previews of upcoming productions of veteran director Tim Larson's Sister Act, from Nashville's Circle Players - Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization - and Center for the Arts' Dreamgirls, directed by 2012 Most Promising Actor Matthew Hayes Hunter, will highlight Sunday's Midwinter's First Night.

Deck the halls, trim the tree, and spin the dreidel. BroadwayWorld is continuing our tradition of celebrating the holiday season with a special countdown. This year we've invited Director of Programming at Feinstein's/54 Below and author of The Untold Stories of Broadway book series Jennifer Ashley Tepper to share her favorites holiday performances. Check back daily to get in the holiday spirit in time for December 25 and to find out what else made her list!