Jason Ross News

The Sanders Family of Smoke on the Mountain trilogy fame returns to Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse November 18 for their 12th season of A Sanders Family Christmas, taking audiences back to Mt Pleasant Baptist Church to celebrate Christmas 1941, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, for their final Saturday night singing before Dennis reports for basic training. The Sanders Family will share songs and testimonies; all the while Preacher Oglethorpe continues his pursuit of June (played by CCP favorites Jason Ross and Patty Payne).

Irvin and Crabtree, producing artistic director at CCP, lead a production company of 50 in the revivial, including Jason Ross, Weslie Webster, Daniel Black, Brenda Frye, Lauren Marshall, and Greg and Lindy Pendzick. Scenery is by Robert Cothran, head of design for a generation at Knoxville's Clarence Brown Company and UT Theaters. Crabtree and John Fionte co-direct, with music direction by Ron Murphy, Leila Nelson as choreographer, and Austin Price and Chaz Sanders as lead dancers.

After that huge success, BroadwayWorld.com announces two awards presentations for Tennessee theater this year, with awards to be presented for Nashville productions and for Tennessee productions outside Music City USA. You may make nominations throughout the month of October, with voting for the awards starting in November, and the announcement of winners set for Sunday, January 8, during Midwinter's First Night at The Keeton Theatre in Donelson. Details about that event will be announced in the coming weeks.

Nathaniel Hackmann and Britt Hancock, both skilled veterans of national theater tours, join some exceedingly talented Tennesseans - Nicole Bégué Hackmann, Jason Ross, Daniel Black and Leila Nelson - in Cumberland County Playhouse's summer musical Oklahoma!, running June 17-September 3 at the venerable Crossville venue.

Kinda wacky, definitely campy and darker than you might expect, Little Shop of Horrors - the musical about the flesh-eating plant and the denizens of Skid Row who bask in the glow of reflected celebrity - is brought to fun, frivolous and colorful life at Cumberland County Playhouse's Adventure Theatre, with a stellar cast dancing and singing their way throughout the show. Led by Greg Pendzick and Lindy Pendzick (yep, they're married) as flower shop schlemiel and amateur botanist Seymour Krelborn and the helium-voiced object of his affections Audrey, the ensemble of seven onstage personalities (and three very important offstage stars) tell the far-fetched story with a certain tongue-in-cheek delivery that works because they are playing the B-movie madness relatively straight.

There comes a moment in the current revival of Oklahoma! (now onstage at Cumberland County Playhouse through September 2) when Jason Ross, the actor playing peddler Ali Hakim comes onstage and action stops for a thundering ovation from the audience. Yep, Jason Ross is so popular with Playhouse audiences that he gets entrance applause - a sure sign that an actor has been doing something right so far as the audience is concerned. Sure, they love other Playhouse veterans just as much, but to say that Jason Ross is beloved by audiences is not, by any stretch of the imagination, hyperbole.

Could there possibly be a showtune more rousing than the eponymous 'Oklahoma!' from Rodgers and Hammerstein's historic musical - or an opening number more iconic or more easily identifiable than 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'? With lyrics and melodies so memorable that you're likely to find yourself singing along (perhaps even before you realize it!) anytime you hear them played, they are among the best-known songs in American musical theater.

By turns, Duck Hunter Shoots Angel will make you laugh out loud, consider deep and philosophical questions and, perhaps, even shed a few tears. Certainly, it's funny and heartwarming, and yet another example of writer Mitch Albom's estimable ability to provoke thought while entertaining - which, quite frankly, has become the stock in trade of the artistic collective at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse.

Nicole Begue Hackmann and her husband, Nathaniel Hackmann, are paired as Laurey and Curly in Cumberland County Playhouse's production of Oklahoma! opening Friday, June 17, in Crossville. In this teaser from the show, the Hackmanns sing 'Surrey With the Fringe On Top' from the timeless score.

While Little Shop of Horrors' Audrey II continues to rampage and rip up the Adventure Theatre at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse (the show runs through August 6), with Greg Pendzick, Lindy Pendzick, Jason Ross, Daniel W. Black and an all-star cast lending their estimable talents to the tale of murder, mirth and mayhem in the flower shop that figures prominently in the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman musical. Here's a glimpse at the production's 'Feed Me.'

Now that CCP's trio of actress playing the urchins - Leila Nelson, Joann Coleman and Ali Gritz - have been given the chance to put their own unique spins on their roles, we dragged them away from rehearsals (or was it a performance?) to give us their take on the whole Little Shop experience in Crossville.

Nathaniel Hackmann and Britt Hancock, both skilled veterans of national theater tours, join some exceedingly talented Tennesseans - Nicole Bégué Hackmann, Jason Ross, Daniel Black and Leila Nelson - in Cumberland County Playhouse's summer musical Oklahoma!, running June 17-September 3 at the venerable Crossville venue.

Nicole Begue Hackman is so perfectly cast as Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Loewe classic My Fair Lady at Cumberland County Playhouse that all those other characters that people the musical may seem superfluous, despite the splendid performances of the rest of the cast. Oh, certainly, their characters aren't really extraneous, but Hackman's portrayal of the Cockney flower girl is so spot-on, so multi-dimensional and delightful - and she sings the role so exquisitely - that you may just find yourself aching to attend the races at Ascot or to hear your favorite opera Aida at Covent Garden when you are transported by onstage magic to 1912 England.

Old-fashioned and sweetly sentimental, The Silver Whistle is a gentle theatrical comedy about a group of downtrodden senior citizens during the Great Depression who are yearning to find something to lift them out of their own collective doldrums and allow them to once again be vital, productive human beings. Luckily, for this particular group of seniors - all of whom live in the 'old people's home' of the Church of John in some unnamed American city - their ho-hum existence is upended by the unexpected arrival of Oliver T. Erwenter, a fast-talking, silver-tongued huckster, who may have discovered the Fountain of Youth.

The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced nominations for outstanding achievement in television, news, radio, promotional writing, and graphic animation during the 2010 season to be honored at the 2011 Writers Guild Awards on February 5, 2011, in Los Angeles and New York.

'There are no small parts, only small actors,' goes the old theatrical saw that's tossed about willy-nilly to encourage budding thespians to take on roles they suspect might be beneath them and their lofty stature. But, of course, there's much truth to be found in the axiom and you will certainly see it brought to life in the efforts of the members of many acting ensembles, particularly those considered among the best in Nashville's 2010 theater season:

Amid threatening weather forecasts and a winter storm bearing down on the South, more than 150 hardy souls gathered to celebrate live theatre in Nashville and Middle Tennessee with the presentation of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville Theatre Awards and First Night's Top Ten of Twenty-Ten on Sunday night, January 9. Street Theatre Company's new venue at 1933 Elm Hill Pike was the setting for the event that featured performances by Joann Coleman, Ben Van Diepen, Ann Street Kavanaugh, Laura Matula, Michael Kitts and Bakari Jamal King.

Despite portentous warnings of an approaching snowmageddon across the South, more than 150 members of the Nashville and Middle Tennessee theater community gathered at Street Theatre Company in Nashville Sunday night, January 9, for the announcement of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville Theatre Award winners and the presentation of First Night's Top Ten of Twenty-Ten.

The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced nominations for outstanding achievement in television, news, radio, promotional writing, and graphic animation during the 2010 season to be honored at the 2011 Writers Guild Awards on February 5, 2011, in Los Angeles and New York.

The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced nominations for outstanding achievement in television, news, radio, promotional writing, and graphic animation during the 2010 season to be honored at the 2011 Writers Guild Awards on February 5, 2011, in Los Angeles and New York.