Beki Baker News

BroadwayWorld brings you the Best of Nashville in the year 2012. Check out the Top Theatre Stories from each month during in the year 2012. We look forward to another exciting year of theatre in 2013!

Voting is now underway for the Nashville Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January.

Voting is now underway for the Nashville Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Nashville Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

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.

First Night Award winning directors Mike Fernandez (Doubt, 2010) and Justin Boccitto (Hairspray, 2011) will join forces to co-direct Les Miserables as Lipscomb University Theatre's homecoming musical in early November 2013.

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.

The Pajama Game's abbreviated run (just four public performances in four days) means that time's a-wasting to get your tickets for the remaining two shows tonight and tomorrow afternoon. So get to it! You'll be glad you did.

Beki Baker directs and 2011 First Night Award-winning Justin Boccitto will choreograph as Lipscomb University's Department of Theatre brings the Richard Adler-Jerry Ross Tony Award-winning musical The Pajama Game to the stage of Collins Alumni Auditorium tonight, November 1-4.

Lipscomb University Theatre presents the trailer for its upcoming production of Pajama Game. Beki Baker directs and 2011 First Night Award-winning Justin Boccitto will choreograph as Lipscomb University's Department of Theatre brings the Richard Adler-Jerry Ross Tony Award-winning musical The Pajama Game to the stage of Collins Alumni Auditorium November 1-4.

Beki Baker directs and 2011 First Night Award-winning Justin Boccitto will choreograph as Lipscomb University's Department of Theatre brings the Richard Adler-Jerry Ross Tony Award-winning musical The Pajama Game to the stage of Collins Alumni Auditorium November 1-4.

Apparently, it is Elvis Week in Nashville (at least according to the fine folks at Loveless Cafe), so before we head out to the theater for a full weekend of show openings and the like, a trip to West Nashville for a slice of the Loveless' Elvis pie is in order (for the uninitiated, that's peanut butter, banana, bacon and homemade whipped cream-the four basic food groups, according to The King.), so before we slip into a diabetic coma, here's installment #7 of Music City Confidential, all the news that's fit to print from onstage, offstage, backstage and beyond…

We've been doing our part to prepare ye the way, watching the action onstage, taking some furtive peeks backstage, listening to all the offstage gossip and venturing beyond the confines of the theater to gain the informed knowledge to see more shows in the Volunteer State than you ever thought possible. So, good people of the theaterati, read on and get all the information you need to know in this, our latest installment of Music City Confidential. This is #6…

Among them (according to The National Center for Education Statistics, some 1,781,000 students at the bachelor's degree level will graduate as part of the Class of 2012), of course, are a fresh crop of would-be actors, directors, stage managers, playwrights, designers, critics and others who hope to parlay that degree in theater into some semblance of a career that will pay them a living wage and foster their future growth and continued devotion to their chosen field.

In the play, 90-year-old Mabel Tidings Bigelow-the first woman to swim the English Channel from England to Franc -insists on celebrating her daughter and granddaughter's annual visit with a croquet party. As the game unfolds, she relives vignettes from the last 80 years, interweaving past and present to reveal the precise moment of opportunity gained and love rejected, the moment that defined her life.

Howe's rather fanciful memory play wears its heart on its crisp linen sleeve, offering audiences a glimpse into the life of Mabel Tidings Bigelow (played with such spirit by Allen that it's easy to fall just a little bit in love with both the actress and the beautifully written character she plays), a spirited 90-year-old former swimming champion who in her later years finds herself looking back over the multitude of events in her life that have shaped her and challenged her. As the story of Mabel's remarkable, though sometimes deceptively mundane and usual, life unfolds onstage before you, you are likely to find yourself thoroughly caught up in the minutiae of that life as the panoply of events and individuals move about-not unlike the ebb and flow of the tides that buffet the beaches of her hometown of Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, an upper crust enclave of Beverly, Mass.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Tina Howe (her Painting Churches was a 1984 finalist for the prize and Pride's Crossing was a Pulitzer finalist in 1997), and Mark Richard, the author of the best-selling House of Prayer No. 2, will be among the special guests at this year's Southern Literary Festival, held March 29-31 on the Lipscomb University campus in Nashville.

In the play, 90-year-old Mabel Tidings Bigelow-the first woman to swim the English Channel from England to Franc -insists on celebrating her daughter and granddaughter's annual visit with a croquet party. As the game unfolds, she relives vignettes from the last 80 years, interweaving past and present to reveal the precise moment of opportunity gained and love rejected, the moment that defined her life.