David Chattam News

Tennessee Repertory Theatre has announced plans for REPaloud, the popular play reading series which highlights contemporary plays.

Clearly, Bud, Not Buddy is a promising opening to NCT's 2010-11 season and it sets the bar high for what is to follow in the coming year. It is a superbly acted production, featuring a number of Nashville actors making notable NCT debuts, and it is augmented by the tremendous design capabilities of NCT's imaginative artisans.

A cast of more than 125 performers took to the stage of the Troutt Theatre at Belmont University to fete the eight members of the 2010 Class of First Night Honorees in a production that featured the best of the best of Nashville theater and included a surprise appearance by Joseph Mahowald, winner of a 1989 First Night Award, now playing the role of Franklin Hart Jr. in the national tour of 9 to 5: The Musical, which opened in Nashville at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, September 21.

George C. Wolfe's acclaimed The Colored Museum is now onstage at Nashville's Amun Ra Theatre, continuing the company's 2010 season hot off the heels of the production of Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog. Opening Thursday, June 17, The Colored Museum runs through July 4. Shows are Thursday through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Pawnshop, a new play by Atlanta playwright Tiffany Parks, will be given a staged reading in Nashville Monday night, June 21, by The African American Playwrights Exchange. The reading will be held upstairs at Bongo Java, 2007 Belmont Boulevard. Pawnshop focuses on relations between members of Atlanta's African-American and Jewish communities in the 1950s and is the winner of the AAPEX Best New Play 2010 award.

George C. Wolfe's acclaimed The Colored Museum is now onstage at Nashville's Amun Ra Theatre, continuing the company's 2010 season hot off the heels of the production of Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog. Opening Thursday, June 17, The Colored Museum runs through July 4. Shows are Thursday through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Hot on the heels of the Nashville premiere of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Amun Ra Theatre shows no sign of slowing down its pace this season as it prepares to tackle Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic Waiting For Godot, directed by guest artist Robert Kiefer and starring a virtual 'who's who' of ART Ensemble members. Waiting For Godot, the second show in ART's 2010 'The Future Is Now Season,' opens April 22 and runs through May 9 at the Amun Ra Theatre Playhouse, 2508 Clifton Avenue.

Keifer's superbly cast five-member ensemble delivers a performance that is compelling and provocative, bringing Beckett's rather nonsensical, although altogether shocking and introspective, premise to vivid life. Since its 1953 premiere, Waiting for Godot has left many of the world's greatest writers and thinkers pondering the meaning of Beckett's work; the significance - or perhaps insignificance - of the five characters; and the meaning behind the characters and their situation. Every word has been parsed, every exchange debated and still we are left to question and to wonder.

Hot on the heels of the Nashville premiere of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Amun Ra Theatre shows no sign of slowing down its pace this season as it prepares to tackle Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic Waiting For Godot, directed by guest artist Robert Kiefer and starring a virtual 'who's who' of ART Ensemble members. Waiting For Godot, the second show in ART's 2010 'The Future Is Now Season,' opens April 22 and runs through May 9 at the Amun Ra Theatre Playhouse, 2508 Clifton Avenue.

Hot on the heels of the Nashville premiere of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Amun Ra Theatre shows no sign of slowing down its pace this season as it prepares to tackle Samuel Beckett's absurdist classic Waiting For Godot, directed by guest artist Robert Kiefer and starring a virtual 'who's who' of ART Ensemble members. Waiting For Godot, the second show in ART's 2010 'The Future Is Now Season,' opens April 22 and runs through May 9 at the Amun Ra Theatre Playhouse, 2508 Clifton Avenue.

In celebration of Black History Month, SistaStyle Productions presents the world premiere of Mary McCallum's Fly, Girl!, a fictionalized look at the life of aviatrix Bessie Coleman. The play, directed by noted Nashville actor/director/educator Barry Scott, opened at Darkhorse Theatre on Friday, February 19, and will close on February 27. Coleman (1892-1926) was the first African-American to become a licensed airplane pilot and was the first American of any race or gender to hold an international pilot's license. McCallum's play follows Bessie from her girlhood in Texas, where she picked cotton and dreamed of flying, then on to Chicago and ultimately to France, becoming known in the process as 'Queen Bess' the aviatrix.

Actress-playwright-producer Mary McCallum gives an extraordinarily strong and vibrant performance as aviatrix Bessie Coleman in her self-written new historical drama, Fly, Girl!, now in its premiere production at Darkhorse Theatre, courtesy of SistaStyle Productions. With an outstanding supporting ensemble, all of whom are completely committed to both their roles and this important production, it is a sharply written and movingly acted new work - definitely one that deserves a broader audience beyond the confines of the Nashville stage.

In celebration of Black History Month, SistaStyle Productions presents the world premiere of Mary McCallum's Fly, Girl!, a fictionalized look at the life of aviatrix Bessie Coleman. The play, directed by noted Nashville actor/director/educator Barry Scott, opens at Darkhorse Theatre on Friday, February 19, continuing through February 27. Coleman (1892-1926) was the first African-American to become a licensed airplane pilot and was the first American of any race or gender to hold an international pilot's license. McCallum's play follows Bessie from her girlhood in Texas, where she picked cotton and dreamed of flying, then on to Chicago and ultimately to France, becoming known in the process as 'Queen Bess' the aviatrix.

In celebration of Black History Month, SistaStyle Productions presents the world premiere of Mary McCallum's Fly, Girl!, a fictionalized look at the life of aviatrix Bessie Coleman. The play, directed by noted Nashville actor/director/educator Barry Scott, opens at Darkhorse Theatre on Friday, February 19, continuing through February 27. Coleman (1892-1926) was the first African-American to become a licensed airplane pilot and was the first American of any race or gender to hold an international pilot's license. McCallum's play follows Bessie from her girlhood in Texas, where she picked cotton and dreamed of flying, then on to Chicago and ultimately to France, becoming known in the process as 'Queen Bess' the aviatrix.