Maryanna Clarke News

Pride Films and Plays is delighted to announce the results of our 2016 LezPlay Contest. From nearly three dozen entries, five finalists have been selected to receive staged readings of their scripts during LezPlay Weekend, which runs October 7-9 at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre of Center on Halsted in Chicago.

Pride Films and Plays is delighted to announce the results of our 2016 LezPlay Contest. From nearly three dozen entries, five finalists have been selected to receive staged readings of their scripts during LezPlay Weekend, which runs October 7-9 at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre of Center on Halsted in Chicago.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project's Tenth Annual Women's Work festival returns to Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater beginning Friday May 6, featuring performing and visual arts created by women. Running through Sunday May 22, the festival spans a wide variety of styles and genres to offer a completely different program at every performance: poetry and essays; one-woman shows; plays and readings; dance, music, film and a display of visual art works in the theater.

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

There's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you. We're delighted to herald the return of BWW Nashville's Critics Choice with today's feature, offering up a compendium of what's available, what we recommend you see, and - in the cases of show's we've seen already - snippets of our reviews to help you make up your mind!

Evelyn O'Neal Brush's bravura performance is reason enough to see Tennessee Women's Theater Project's production of Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, but clearly it's Lauren Gunderson's play itself that should sell tickets. Emilie (as we will refer to the play from here on out - at least to the conclusion of this review) is an engaging treatise on the life and times of the mathematician, physicist, writer and critic, whose supreme intellect and prodigious literary output during the Age of the Enlightenment made her both notorious and admired at a time when women were thought of primarily as chattel.

Evelyn O'Neal Brush stars in the title role of Lauren Gunderson's Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, as Tennessee Women's Theater Project continues its ninth season of provocative professional theater with the Tennessee premiere of Gunderson's play. The production opens at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater tonight, February 19, running weekends through March 6. 

Evelyn O'Neal Brush stars in the title role of Lauren Gunderson's Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, as Tennessee Women's Theater Project continues its ninth season of provocative professional theater with the Tennessee premiere of Gunderson's play. The production opens at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater on February 19, running weekends through March 6. 

Rebekah Durham is not Reese Witherspoon, so no one is paying her a million bucks to star in some holiday-themed rom com - but make no mistake about it, they damn well oughta be! But for now, Nashville theater-goers are the lucky ones; we get to see her onstage in Tennessee Women's Theater Project's first-ever Christmastime production: Ginna Hoben's The Twelve Dates of Christmas, a thoroughly delightful and wonderfully entertaining one-woman show that offers up some universal truths for this or any other season.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project presents its first-ever holiday season offering, Ginna Hoben's The Twelve Dates of Christmas, for a limited, seven-performance run at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre tonight, December 4-13. Described as a 'comic romp' and a 'side-splitting' one-woman play, The Twelve Dates of Christmas stars Nashville actress Rebekah Durham in the role of Mary.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project presents its first-ever holiday season offering, Ginna Hoben's The Twelve Dates of Christmas, for a limited, seven-performance run at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre December 4-13. Described as a 'comic romp' and a 'side-splitting' one-woman play, The Twelve Dates of Christmas stars Nashville actress Rebekah Durham in the role of Mary.

Take Cate Jo, for example: A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she originally arrived on the Vanderbilt campus with an eye toward a career in academia, ultimately changing course to pursue a career as an actress. Most recently, she played the challenging role of Bianca in Tennessee Women's Theater Project's production of Lauren Gunderson's The Taming, a fanciful contemporary comedy that fairly crackled with intensity as it examined popular and political culture in the United States, viewing the trajectory of American political thought from the earliest days of the republic to the present. Earlier this year, she played Lady Nijo and Nell in Vanderbilt University Theatre's production of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls.

It's all in the timing. No matter if you're delivering a joke, performing a new play or just putting something noteworthy out into the ether, the key to success is often just a matter of good timing. Case in point: the recently crowned Miss America 2016 came into the pageant as Miss Georgia - and in Lauren Gunderson's play, The Taming (now onstage at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theatre in the "first east of the Rockies" production from Tennessee Women's Theater Project), we are treated to the "art imitates life" scene in which Miss Georgia becomes Miss America.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project launches its 2015-16 season with the fast-paced, irreverent comedy The Taming by Lauren Gunderson. The production opens tonight at Nashville's Looby Theater, running weekends through October 18. Which means it's a matter of perfect timing for actress Colette Divine and director Maryanna Clarke to take on our Friday Five questions and to give us some insight into their theatrical lives.

With almost 400 people in the audience, the leading lights of Tennessee theater were heralded with the presentation of the 2015 First Night Honors Gala, Sunday night at the iconic and historic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in Nashville. Hosted by Geoff Davin, Stephanie Jones-Benton and Erica Patterson, the event featured musical numbers by more than 100 performers in tribute to the Class of 2015 Honorees.

With almost 400 people in the audience, the leading lights of Tennessee theater were heralded with the presentation of the 2015 First Night Honors Gala, Sunday night at the iconic and historic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in Nashville. Hosted by Geoff Davin, Stephanie Jones-Benton and Erica Patterson, the event featured musical numbers by more than 100 performers in tribute to the Class of 2015 Honorees.

With almost 400 people in the audience, the leading lights of Tennessee theater were heralded with the presentation of the 2015 First Night Honors Gala, Sunday night at the iconic and historic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in Nashville. Hosted by Geoff Davin, Stephanie Jones-Benton and Erica Patterson, the event featured musical numbers by more than 100 performers in tribute to the Class of 2015 Honorees.