Beki Baker News

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.

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.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival will present Julius Caesar, a complex political story with themes of corrupted power, betrayal and tragic consequences, at Belmont University's Troutt Theater Jan. 10-29, 2012.

With taut, focused direction by Beki Baker and what is arguably the finest cast of actors to be assembled on a Nashville stage in recent memory, Nashville Shakespeare Festival heats winter up to a fever pitch with its remarkable production of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's timeless-and very timely-tragedy rife with unbridled ambition, conspiratorial plotting, revenge and deception.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival will present Julius Caesar, a complex political story with themes of corrupted power, betrayal and tragic consequences, at Belmont University's Troutt Theater Jan. 10-29, 2012.

One of the new events added to the line-up for 2011 First Night, The Theatre Honors was The Women In Theatre Luncheon - which saluted the inaugural eight recipients of The First Night Star Award - held Tuesday, August 30, at The Listening Room Cafe in Cummins Station. Co-chaired by Corrie Miller and Neely O'Brien Green, the event was produced by Jeffrey Ellis, founder and executive producer of First Night.

William Shakespeare must defend his works' relevancy for the 21st Century in Shakespeare's Case, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's 2011 winter production. This original play closes Jan. 30 at Belmont University's Troutt Theater.

Should Dick Wolf need any new fresh ideas for his aging Law and Order TV franchise (and recent events would indicate that he might), we would suggest he ring up Nan Gurley, Denice Hicks and Claire Syler - the scribes of Nashville Shakespeare Festival's current hit Shakespeare's Case - for an infusion of new blood and an influx of new plotlines. Of course, those plotlines might not be new, since they'd probably hew pretty closely to the Bard's classics for which the estimable Nashville troupe is best known, but you can rest assured the trio would have a novel take on stories that audiences would enthusiastically embrace.

William Shakespeare must defend his works' relevancy for the 21st Century in Shakespeare's Case, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's 2011 winter production. This original play runs Jan. 13-30 at Belmont University's Troutt Theater.

William Shakespeare must defend his works' relevancy for the 21st Century in Shakespeare's Case, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's 2011 winter production. This original play runs Jan. 13-30 at Belmont University's Troutt Theater.

Provocative and compelling, John Patrick Shanley's script for Doubt remains stagebound - albeit a Pulitzer Prize-winning, stagebound masterpiece - until a confident director and cast take on the challenge of mounting a production, in which to breathe life into the characters created so vividly by the playwright on the written page. For the next two weekends, Nashville audiences are given the opportunity to see Doubt in a remarkably acted and superbly staged production at David Lipscomb University's Shamblin Theatre.