Cathy Street News

Once again, it's that time of year: a period of reflection and introspection that gives us all the perfect opportunity to express our gratitude for the things in our lives that have meant the most to us in 2015. We reached out to members of our theater community, to inquire about that which they are thankful for and we got some very heartfelt, considered romances that, leavened by the humor injected from some of our favorite people, gives us added insight into the psyche of the artistic and creative-minded people who make theatrical magic every day…

?Nashville Repertory Theatre has created a collection of diverse theatre workshops for individuals with various levels of theatre experience. Each workshop is a single day session and is led by an expert in that field.

Bringing back the audience favorite from one of Street Theatre's early seasons, Street Theatre Company closes its tenth season with the Off-Broadway cult classic BAT BOY. In this rock 'n' roll musical, a supernatural half bat/half boy discovered in a cave in West Virginia attempts to integrate into a narrow-minded town. He tries to fit in, but happiness is shattered as the town hears the shocking story of Bat Boy's unholy origin.

Street Theatre Company, well-known amongst Nashville audiences for staging darkly edgy productions, brings yet another musical premiere to Nashville with the Off-Broadway hit HEATHERS. Based on the cult classic movie of the same name, the musical centers around three shoulder-padded, scrunchie-wearing Heathers in the 1980s, who are the hottest and cruelest girls in school. The Heathers are in trouble when a misfit rejects them for the dark, sexy stranger who plans to put them in their place -- six feet under.

Directors and producers in the Nashville region are seeking actors for upcoming productions of Mary Poppins, Bat Boy, August: Osage County, First Baptist of Ivy Gap - and new productions from Actors Bridge Ensemble and Blackbird Theater. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse!

Directors and producers in the Nashville region are seeking actors for upcoming productions of Mary Poppins, Bat Boy, August: Osage County and First Baptist of Ivy Gap - and producers are seeking cast members for The Music Man at the Keeton Theatre. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse!

Street Theatre Company, well-known amongst Nashville audiences for staging darkly edgy productions, brings yet another musical premiere to Nashville with the Off-Broadway hit HEATHERS. Based on the cult classic movie of the same name, the musical centers around three shoulder-padded, scrunchie-wearing Heathers in the 1980s, who are the hottest and cruelest girls in school. The Heathers are in trouble when a misfit rejects them for the dark, sexy stranger who plans to put them in their place -- six feet under.

VWA Theatricals has found its Cathy and Jamie for the upcoming production of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years: Delaney Amatrudo and Luke Denison. Amatrudo and Denison will lead the cast for the musical, which runs August 13-22 at Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater. Amatrudo currently studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and Denison is a recent graduate of Indiana University.

Looking for a way to beat the heat this weekend? What's better than sinking into a seat in a darkened auditorium and letting the talented actors onstage whisk you way to a whole different world from the world iin which you toil Monday through Friday? Theater companies throughout the midstate are ready to dazzle you with their latest productions and here are some of this weekend's best bets...

We pride ourselves on our bounteous Southern hospitality here in Nashville, so who's gonna explain this: On Thursday, as thousands of country music fans gathered downtown for CMA Fest and thousands more fans of every musical genre you can think of were headed southward for the Bonnaroo Music Festival - just another summer in Tennessee, mind you - a truck spilled its load all over Interstate 65-S, adding to the hot, humid atmosphere with a whole mess of fish parts. Yep, you heard it right: smelly, disgusting fish parts baking on the hot asphalt under the blazing sun.

It's another busy theater week in Tennessee, and in Nashville there are an extra 50,000 to 100,000 country music fans jamming up traffic and increasing wait times at local restaurants, thanks to CMA Music Fest, which natives and longtimers will remember as Fan Fair. So while you're steering clear of our version of Broadway in downtown Nashville, which will be teeming with more people than you can shake a stick at (as my mama would say),  you should instead make reservations to see some local talent onstage at some of the shows included in our Critic's Choice column today!

It's 1967 and a young Marine, returning from a life-changing experience in Vietnam, is on a bus bound for San Francisco, the site of his last hurrah in 1963: a momentous night before he shipped out for Okinawa in the company of friends and cohorts with whom he'd created a bond he thought would last forever. That initial scene in Dogfight – the hit off-Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and a book by Peter Duchan, based upon a little-known movie of the same name that starred River Phoenix and Lili Taylor – serves as a gateway to the story of Eddie Birdlace and his fellow Marines and a winsome, idealistic young woman who left her imprint on his heart despite his best efforts to forget her.

It's another busy weekend of new shows opening and many others continuing to delight audiences, with ACT 1's Dog Sees God and Street Theatre Company's Dogfight both opening tonight, while two shows that opened yesterday will continue to treat audiences to some especially wonderful music. Plus, there's a whole slate of shows being performed at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse, a revival of Osborne & Epplers' Southern Fried Nuptials down in Woodbury at the Arts Center of Cannon County, and John Chaffin's Cliffhanger enters its final weekend at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre. Go to the theater, young man (and woman) and let yourself be transported to a whole new world of magic and enchantment!

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five: five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. Today, we introduce two actors from Street Theatre Company's production of Dogfight - one of the most eagerly anticipated new musicals we've heard about in the past 25-plus years of covering Nashville/Tennessee theatre - and, judging from their answers to our five questions and our new 'bonus round' question, Audrey Johnson and Jens Jacobson are two names we think you'll be talking about in the coming months

Cathy Street, artistic director of Street Theatre Company, and Taylor Kelly, one of the actors in this production of Dogfight, took some time out of their schedules to answer some questions for us about this amazing production. Kelly is a new addition to the Nashville theatre community, having moved to Nashville right before rehearsals started on this production.

No matter what the calendar says, we're in early summer already - insofar as theater in Tennessee is concerned, at least - and there are four new shows opening this week that should command your attention. Along with a number of shows that are continuing their runs (like John Chaffin's Cliffhanger at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre), you have plenty of diverse and intriguing onstage offerings to keep you in the relative, air-conditioned comfort of a darkened theater. We've done the necessary research, made the calls to the people-in-the-know and have included the dates, the phone numbers and the websites to make it as easy as possible for you to buy tickets and go show some support for the arts while indulging in the magic of live theater…

Street Theatre Company, continuing to meet its goal to stage Nashville premieres, opens its second show of the 2015 season with the Off-Broadway musical DOGFIGHT. The show originally opened in New York in 2012 and, after receiving rave reviews and numerous awards, made its way to the London stage in 2014. Following its incredible success, regional theaters in both the United States and Europe will be mounting productions of DOGFIGHT this year.

Street Theatre Company, one of Nashville's preeminent professional theaters, has left their Elm Hill Pike home of the last four years to partner with Bailey STEM Magnet Middle Prep School in East Nashville. The company is now in residence at Bailey, and will be performing its 10th Anniversary Season (which consists of four mainstage productions and two children's productions) in the school's intimate auditorium.

Street Theatre Company has brought a little bit of Memphis to Music City with their production of Memphis: The Musical. The show opened Friday night at Street Theatre Company's new location, Bailey Middle School. This is the first regional production in Tennessee since the touring Broadway production ended.

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.