Gerold Oliver News

Local Black-owned theatre company Kennie Playhouse Theatre is collaborating with Nashville Shakes to produce August Wilson's Jitney, which runs August 12-22 at oneC1TY in Nashville, and September 16 and 17 at Williamson County Performing Arts Center at Academy Park in Franklin, TN. 

Five-time Grammy Award-winning bassist Victor Wooten has joined the creative team of August Wilson's JITNEY, opening Nashville Shakespeare's annual Summer Shakespeare Festival. Wooten, also a songwriter and record producer who was ranked among the Top 10 Bassists of All Time by Rolling Stone Magazine, will compose original music for the show.

Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline, which continues Nashville Repertory Theatre's 35th season, is an emotionally driven work of contemporary eloquence and power, a play which audiences should experience in hopes of opening their eyes to the institutional prejudice and bias that exists in this country a?" whether we care to admit it or not. At least, that's the initial takeaway for theater-goers who are giving a cursory review of what they've just seen onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theatre.

One need venture no further than Street Theatre Company's Be More Chill a?" directed by Sawyer Wallace, it's one of the year's best musicals a?" for just such a theatrical adventure. Starring Seth Bennett, Briar Moroschak and Garett Scott, three up-and-coming performers for whom their futures seem unlimited, Be More Chill only recently closed out a Broadway run before its Nashville premiere, which continues through this weekend.

Oh, those wacky Brits: They love their comedy dry, broad and often rather lowbrow, they adore mistaken identities, hijinks in the bedchamber and a bit with a dog. And that, gentle readers, is exactly what is delivered in the deliciously irreverent, surprisingly heartfelt Shakespeare in Love - Lee Hall's stage adaptation of the 1999 Oscar-winning best film of the same name - now onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theatre in a sparkling new production from Nashville Repertory Theatre.

Today, in anticipation of their opening weekend, three members of Copeland's cast - Cailen Fu, Joseph Leitess and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva - offer some background information on what shapes them as actors (including their most memorable "the show must go on" moments) and offer suggestions for why you shouldn't miss Shakespeare in Love in our latest Friday 5 (+1):

Shakespeare in Love - the final show of Nashville Repertory Theatre's 2018-19 season - opens Saturday night, March 23, at the Andrew Johnson Theatre at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, running through April 13. Replete with comedy, a secret romance, live music, a play-within-a-play, stunning costumes, swordfights, a hefty wager and Queen Elizabeth I herself, there's also the promise of a very cute dog to entice audiences to the theatre.

During the very first scenes of Ghost - the world premiere of the play by Idris Goodwin, based upon the 2016 book of the same name by Jason Reynolds, now onstage at Nashville Children's Theatre through February 3 - the audience becomes caught up in the emotional turmoil experienced by young Castle Cranshaw and his mom, Terri. As their world is upended by events taking place onstage, the story of Ghost is set in motion, hurtling toward a moment in which lives are changed and the future opens up in ways both unexpected and completely authentic.

In an act of theatrical symmetry, full of the 'whimsical magic' only live performance can provide, the first production of Arts Center of Cannon County's 2019 Season - the stage version of Singin' in the Rain - will reunite the director with his leading actress, whom he first cast in her very first musical when she was nine years old. It's been almost 20 years since the last time veteran director Jeffrey Ellis initially worked with Lindsey Mapes Duggin, the director of education for Arts Center of Cannon County, who will lead the cast of Singin' in the Rain as its heroine, young star-to-be Kathy Selden, as well as taking on the role of producer.

Not often does it happen that a young actor walks away with a show lock, stock and barrel - especially if he's in the company of some of the most experienced veteran actors to be found on local stages. But that is exactly what happens in Arts Center of Cannon County's current 2108 mainstage season finale of Hello, Dolly!, the Jerry Herman classic now onstage in Woodbury through November 18.

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 15, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar to help you plot your course...

For plenty of fast-paced action, along with some stellar performances by a fresh-faced cast of eager young theatrical triple threats and a coterie of Nashville stage favorites, one need look no further than Disney's Newsies, the latest onstage offering from Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, the iconic Music City venue that's been entertaining audiences for more than half a century. In its way, The Barn (as it is affectionately known in these parts) and its laudable history ensure that its treatment of the popular musical theater title lend the show's historical basis more than a little gravitas in the making of a stage spectacle.

Today, The Thursday Five(+1) shines the spotlight on four members of the Chaffin's Barn cast of Newsies - David Ridley, Samantha Blake, Natalie Rankin and Kayla Petrille - who took time out from their rigorous regimen of rehearsals to tell our readers more about themselves and to offer their own suggestions for why you should come see their show, which runs through October 22.

Heathers, the off-Broadway musical by Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy based on the 1989 cult classic film of the same name, wraps up its sold-out run today at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts, offering audiences an outrageously fun and on-target treatise on mean girls and caught up in the gravitational pull of their starpower at a fictional Ohio high school.

At first blush, it would be easy to say that there's not much action packed into Annie Baker's The Flick - now onstage in a noteworthy production from Nashville's Verge Theater Company at Belmont's Black Box Theater - but that is, in fact, a pretty simplistic take on a story that is as complex and as diverting as real life itself. And just like life, Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning script packs a whole lot of drama into its storyline, which is brought to life by a superb cast of actors under the direction of Jaclyn Jutting.

With a new year quickly approaching, staff members at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre are already hard at work on the first production of 2018 and recently announced plans to give the old girl an update following a momentous first year of Norma Luther's ownership of the venerable theater. On opening night of the holiday season musical A Wonderful Life, Luther announced that the company currently In its 51st year of bringing professional theater to Nashville will temporarily close its doors to undergo significant renovations to ensure its history continues for at least another half-century.

George Bailey's story is a universal one, so much so that some 70 years after the film treatment of It's A Wonderful Life debuted, the tale of an upstanding citizen faced with failure and ruin, has become one of the most beloved holiday-season tales of all time. But the initial reaction of movie-goers to the film, although not nearly so dire as some cinema historians would have you believe, is considered one of the best-reviewed movies of all time.