Jason Ross News

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below!

Tall, blond and handsome-and looking for all the world like some sort of biblical superhero-Colin Cahill may be the ideal Joseph, given the sumptuous and fast paced production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat at Cumberland County Playhouse. Cahill charms and entertains as Jacob's favorite son, surrounded by what seems like a cast of thousands, bringing Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical to life with enough energy to power every household along the Cumberland Plateau.

Colin Cahill stars as The Cumberland County Playhouse wraps up its 2012 season with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, opening Friday, November 16 and runnng through December 23 on the Crossville theater's Mainstage.

Curtain's up on Cumberland County Playhouse's 15th annual presentation of A Sanders Family Christmas-the holiday-flavored sequel to the enormously popular Smoke on the Mountain-a down-home musical filled with faith, family and old-fashioned fun and starring a cast of Playhouse favorites.

On Thursday, October 4, Emmy Award winning writers for The Daily Show, Jo Miller, Daniel Radosh, and Jason Ross, acclaimed comedian Maysoon Zayid, and director Peter DuBois will participate in "Exploring the Art and Politics of Satire," a post-show talk back immediately following the 7pm performance of Jon Kern's MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM. The panelists will explore the use of comedy in controversial subjects, the evolution of political satire in the last decade, and how satire can create an understanding of the world. For tickets to the performance and panel visit www.2ST.com or call (212) 246-4422.

Austin Price and Horace Smith star as Cumberland County Playhouse brings one of the most popular-and most frequently requested-titles its almost 50-year history back to the with an exciting new production of Big River, directed by BWW Nashville Theatre Awards winner Britt Hancock. Big River runs through November 2 in Crossville.

COMEDY CENTRAL received three awards in the 2011-2012 Primetime Emmy Awards competition, as awarded by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS).

Two of Cumberland County Playhouse's favorite actresses and singers-Weslie Webster and Brenda Frye-will be presented in a special 8 p.m. concert performance on Saturday, September 29, entitled interestingly enough An Evening with Brenda Frye and Weslie Webster.

Back in the day-1907, actually-when John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World premiered at Dublin's Abbey Theater, it apparently caused riots, its tale of an apparent patricide engendering great public outrage and overt hostilities. Four years later, when the play debuted in New York City, audience members hurled epithets, rotten tomatoes and various other vegetation across the footlights, protesting the play's perceived "immorality."

Yankees might find the idea crazy to turn a classic Irish play into a bluegrass musical set in the Virginia Mountains, but Southerners know that the Blue Ridge Mountains were settled by Scots-Irish folks-and that a fiddle is a fiddle all over the globe. So it should come as no surprise that John Fionte, Cumberland County Playhouse's New Works Director-who describes himself as a Boston Yankee in the Cumberlands-was a bit skeptical when he first heard the premise of Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge, the new musical that opens in Crossville on Thursday, August 23.

We've been doing our part to prepare ye the way, watching the action onstage, taking some furtive peeks backstage, listening to all the offstage gossip and venturing beyond the confines of the theater to gain the informed knowledge to see more shows in the Volunteer State than you ever thought possible. So, good people of the theaterati, read on and get all the information you need to know in this, our latest installment of Music City Confidential. This is #6…

McGovern creatively opens and closes the musical with an image that evokes all the glitter and glamor of old Hollywood: the presentation of the Academy Awards in 1941, the year that Ginger Rogers beat out such adversaries as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine and Martha Scott for the best actress Oscar for her performance of "knocked-up shopgirl" Kitty Foyle.

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to Nashville.BroadwayWorld.com's latest installment of The Friday Five: five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find on stages in the Volunteer State. Yes, I'm well aware that the calendar says today is Wednesday, but there's a method to my madness: Opening Friday night at Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville is Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Rogers Musical which stars today's Friday Fiver-Douglas Waterbury-Tieman-in the pivotal role of Fred Astaire!

Jeremy Benton has come a long way since he was dancing around in the backyard of his family's home in Springfield, Tennessee. In fact, way back when-before he even had his first dance class with Cherri Coleman at the Springfield School of Classical Dance-for all he knew he might have even created or invented what he later learned was referred to as "tap."

But The Music Man? Come on, the classic Meredith Willson musical chestnut is as corny and all-American as you can possibly get (let's face it, Willson is the master of that particular genre of musical theater occupied by The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown-plus he wrote the Oscar-nominated score for William Wyler's The Little Foxes, which is one of my all-time favorite movies: "The grits didn't hold they heat"), it's pure hokum and there is absolutely nothing at all cynical about it. So why the heck does it make me respond with some emotional fervor?

Ginger Rogers danced her way into the hearts of millions-and into the arms of Fred Astaire-in some of filmdom's best-loved musicals. Beginning July 27, Cumberland County Playhouse gives you the chance to see Ginger's awe-inspiring story brought to life in Backwards in High Heels, a new musical set to some of the 20th century's best-known music.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more. Art Isn't Easy: A Celebration of the Joys and Challenges of the Creative Life (the cabaret's title is taken from a lyric in the score of Stephen Sondheim's 1983 musical Sunday in the Park With George) will feature such Playhouse favorites Daniel Black, Lauren Marshall Murphy, Leila Nelson, Lindy Pendzick, Greg Pendzick, Austin Price, Michael Ruff and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more. Art Isn't Easy: A Celebration of the Joys and Challenges of the Creative Life (the cabaret's title is taken from a lyric in the score of Stephen Sondheim's 1983 musical Sunday in the Park With George) will feature such Playhouse favorites Daniel Black, Lauren Marshall Murphy, Leila Nelson, Lindy Pendzick, Greg Pendzick, Austin Price, Michael Ruff and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for tonight, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more.