Chambers Stevens News

Welcome to The Torture Chambers Collective and the man behind it, Chamber's Stevens. In 2019, after two successful World Premiere's, Soul Crushing Disco Ball, Diners, Romance and Noble Pig, Stevens is gearing up for another busy Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019. He will present five original new shows written by him next month at HFF19 including Swiped The Musical, Pho Girl, Acid Wash Love, ExtraOrdinary,and Naked Man Rising. Two of the works won the First Time Producers Scholarship Award from Fringe (Pho Girl &Naked Man Rising). He has mentored three additional productions for this years Fringe Fest, including Hell's Finest, All Our Pretty Songs, and Start Swimming all part ofThe Torture Chambers Collective.

The World Premiere of Acid Wash Love presented by Charlotte Pezzo is a play about seduction with sweets in the age of #metoo. Written by Chambers Stevens and directed by Victoria Hoffman, this titillating and immersive production starring Laurent Sayer, Maitlyn Pezzo and Bethany Nava opens June 8, 2019 at The Complex Dorie Theatre (6476 Santa Monica Blvd).

Written and directed by Chambers Stevens, Pho Girl, starring Brigitte Ngo-Trinh, winner of the Hollywood Fringe Festival First Time Producers Award, will present the world premiere at 2019 Hollywood Fringe Fest July 8, @ 8PM, at Studio Stage.

Courtenay McQueston is thrilled to present a killer comedy by Chambers Stevens, with acclaimed actor Jae Head (The Blindside, Hancock, and Friday Night Lights), making his directorial debut and starring Ashley McQuestion. A world premiere comedy about how your weakness is sometimes your biggest strength. Opening June 8 at Studio C Theatre, located at 6448 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA. 90038. Tickets on sale at: http://hff19.org/6084

Smash hit from Son Of Semele Solo Creation Festival will open at Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019. Naked Man Rising by writers Travis Perkins and Chambers Stevens is a powerful one-man show starring first time producer, Kyle Durack. The show is directed by Perkins and opens June 9, at Studio Stage (Main Stage).

Due to an enormous response to the world premiere limited engagement of "SOUL CRUSHING DISCO BALL"Anarchy Pictures are thrilled to announce a two week extension through February 3, 2019. The show remains at The Hudson Backstage Theatre.

Anarchy Pictures and Gia Paladino are proud to present a World Premiere play by an award-winning playwright team, Travis Perkins and Chambers Stevens. Opening January 4, 2019. The new play will be at The Hudson Backstage Theatre, located at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. Tickets: www.plays411.com/discoball

Anarchy Pictures and Gia Paladino are proud to present a World Premiere play by an award-winning playwright team, Travis Perkins and Chambers Stevens. Opening January 4, 2019. The new play will be at The Hudson Backstage Theatre, located at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. Tickets: www.plays411.com/discoball

In her welcoming note to audiences at the 2018 version of Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream - the 30th anniversary of the company's annual Shakespeare in the Park festivities at Centennial Park (which now is without question the place to be on a midsummer's night in Music City, all other artistic offerings that abound notwithstanding) - executive artistic director Denice Hicks takes a fanciful look ahead to 2048, and suggests that she'll either be in the audience or, quite possibly, in the cast of whatever show happens to be onstage some 30 years hence. Let me just make this prediction by way of critical pronouncement: Denice Hicks, then 88, will once again be playing the ethereal Puck in NSF's then-current Midsummer and I, who will be a spry 91-year-old at the time (or possibly a critical hologram), will be in the audience once again to marvel at her ageless skills and timeless artistry.

Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter, producer and actress Lari White Cannon who made her Broadway debut in the Johnny Cash musical review Ring of Fire died early this morning in Nashville after a battle with peritoneal cancer. She was 52 years old.

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.

Don't Miss Program 3, July 28-31! Another exciting, diverse program closes the 2016 Solo Creation Festival! We've got a comic tale from Son of Semele Ensemble member Michael Evans Lopez, an edgy new work from the Program 1 writing team of Chambers Stevens and Travis Perkins, plus a reprise of Program 2's haunting Revelation.

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.

Tennesseans come from a long line of storytellers - it's in our collective DNA, it seems, what with the state being home to the National Storytelling Festival, among other things - and Chambers Stevens (the 2012 First Night Honoree who co-founded Nashville Shakespeare Festival) is no different. In fact, for generations, members of his family have entertained those around them with stories both far-fetched and resolutely true.

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.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Justin Boyd, Britt Byrd, Katherine Morgan and Taylor Novak will team up to host 2016 Midwinter's First Night - set for Sunday night, January 10, 2016 - and to ride herd on First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis for the presentation of the BWW Nashville Awards and the presentation of First Night's Top 10 of 2016.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!