Curtis Reed News

Feeling the urge to let your imagination run wild, your spirit to soar or to just leave the world in which you live and go on an adventure? Sounds like a trip to the theater is in order! Luckily, companies all over the Volunteer State have been hard at work, creating new productions to transform and to transport, shows that will entertain you this summer. That's where THE NASHVILLE THEATER CALENDAR comes in handy: Peruse our listings every week to find out what shows you should see!

Meggan Utech and Gracie McGraw will make their Chaffin's Barn debuts this summer, joining Barn favorite Martha Wilkinson in Sister Act, the hilarious, five-time Tony Award-nominated musical, opening June 8 and running through July 22.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's May 17, 2017, and summer - or a reasonable facsimile thereof - has arrived in Nashville, with temperatures already climbing toward the 90s! When prompts the musical question: What's on your agenda for the summer of 2017? Anything we should know about and, more importantly, write about?

Studio Tenn and Tennessee Performing Arts Center's joint venture to produce Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita in Nashville resulted in the production claiming the top prize as "Outstanding Musical of The Year" at Sunday's Midwinter's First Night event at The Larry Keeton Theatre. Nashville Repertory Theatre's production of Nate Eppler's original play Good Monsters took the title of "Outstanding Play of The Year" in the annual ceremony that dates back to its origins in 1989.

Nashville audiences can look forward to the warm-hearted and comedic holiday treat when Nashville Repertory Theatre produces A Christmas Story for an eighth consecutive season. This familiar story of young Ralphie's wintertime woes has become a tradition that many Middle Tennessee families eagerly attend year after year.

Nashville audiences can look forward to the warm-hearted and comedic holiday treat when Nashville Repertory Theatre produces A Christmas Story for an eighth consecutive season. This familiar story of young Ralphie's wintertime woes has become a tradition that many Middle Tennessee families eagerly attend year after year.

With former Tennessee Titan Eddie George, Jenny Littleton of The Doyle and Debbie Show, founding Rep actor Jackie Welch, a collection of audience favorites, and some intriguing new faces added to the mix, Nashville Repertory's five-show season for 2016-17 tackles the many dimensions of love: commitment, dilemma, risk, joy, and disappointment.

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!

Stephen Sondheim's Assassins - his musical treatment of the history of presidential assassinations in America - remains one of the most compelling and intriguing works to be found in the musical theater canon, focusing on a veritable rogue's gallery of historic figures whose infamy lives on decades after their horrific actions first gained them the notoriety they so often pursued in their disparate, yet somehow weirdly connected, lives.

Coming off of its tremendously successful season opener IN THE HEIGHTS, Street Theatre Company stages its second show of the 2016 season, the hilarious and thought­provoking musical ASSASSINS. With music and lyrics by the one and only Stephen Sondheim (SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS), the production opened Off Broadway before moving to London's West End. The show created such a buzz that it reopened in New York, this time on Broadway, where it won multiple Tony and Drama Desk awards.

Coming off of its tremendously successful season opener In The Heights, Street Theatre Company stages its second show of the 2016 season, Stephen Sondheim's provocative musical Assassins, May 20 through June 5.

Coming off of its tremendously successful season opener IN THE HEIGHTS, Street Theatre Company stages its second show of the 2016 season, the hilarious and thought­provoking musical ASSASSINS. With music and lyrics by the one and only Stephen Sondheim (SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS), the production opened Off Broadway before moving to London's West End. The show created such a buzz that it reopened in New York, this time on Broadway, where it won multiple Tony and Drama Desk awards.

Coming off of its tremendously successful season opener In The Heights, Street Theatre Company stages its second show of the 2016 season, Stephen Sondheim's provocative musical Assassins, May 20 through June 5.

Ken Ludwig created one of theater's best-loved and critically acclaimed farces with Lend Me A Tenor, then updated the book of one of musical theater's most revered Gershwin titles (Girl Crazy) with the long-running and equally beloved Crazy For You. Since those two mega-hits, however, he's been less successful (although, inarguably, he's kept busy churning out scripts and cashing royalty checks) and perhaps no new script has proved that point more than Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.

Today, in a preview of what's to come on the Scottish moors (where mayhem and hijinks reportedly ensue), Brett Cantrell and Evan Taylor Williams take their places in The Friday 5 spotlight, giving us some insight into their theatrical lives and sharing why they think Baskerville is a perfect show for you. But, be forewarned: the altogether too-brief run is close to selling out, so securing your reservations for the rollicking mystery should be at the top of your "to-do" list.

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of Legally Blonde, the Musical (at Columbia's Center for the Arts) and The Little Mermaid (directed by Brittany Blaire Anderson for Circle Players) and Metro Parks and the Music City Theatre Collective team up for a series of special classes, including an audition workshop, for this spring, and producer Ken Bernstein presents a workshop to enable you to “Tell Your Story” at Bongo After Hours Theatre. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of God of Carnage (at Nashville's 4th Story Theatre) and Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapine Agile (directed by Jonah Jackson for Towne Centre Theatre) and Metro Parks and the Music City Theatre Collective team up for a series of special classes, including an audition workshop, for this spring. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Directors and producers throughout Middle Tennessee are seeking actors for upcoming productions of 42nd Street (at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts) and God of Carnage (Nashville's 4th Story Theatre) - and Metro Parks and the Music City Theatre Collective team up for a series of special classes, including an audition worshop, for this spring. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Here's a question you may have asked yourself about Tosha Pendergrast: When does she sleep? Mundane, perhaps - but it's a question that comes to mind when you realize that she's always working, whether she's teaching students at Lauri Gregoire's Bellevue Dance Center, choreographing her latest show (Dreamgirls opened just last week at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts, Street Theatre Company's production of In The Heights opens in a couple of weeks), performing onstage (she was among the cavalcade of stars in the Music City Theatre Collective's debut production Showstoppers), doing television appearances (The Dance Network is calling) or just living life with her handsome and charming husband Benjamin Pendergrast (together they are the perfect couple, each devoted to the other)…

Metro Parks' Theatre Program will host several classes and workshops for interested students ages 9 to 17 this spring, leading up to this summer's co-production with Music City Theatre Collective of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at the Centennial Park band shell.