Matt Garner News

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.

It's already heating up in Nashville and it's not even summer yet! But Nashville area theater companies are hard at work to ensure that audiences have a lot to choose from in the way of live theater presented in cool, darkened theaters. Here are our suggestions for the most eagerly anticipated shows of the sultry summer season…

Hitting perhaps too close to home for some and harkening back to memories best left unrecalled, while challenging audiences to examine their own lives, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman remains an emotional, visceral theatrical masterpiece. Now, through March 28, it is vividly recaptured, like so much lightening in a bottle, in a deeply affecting production from Nashville Rep, directed with finesse by Rene D. Copeland and acted by an all-star cast of Nashville performers who together create a stunningly specific place in time that somehow is timeless and universal.

Nashville Repertory Theatre will present its newest production Death of a Salesman, the classic, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. Death of a Salesman runs tonight, March 12-28, 2015 at Andrew Johnson Theater at Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Nashville Repertory Theatre will present its newest production Death of a Salesman, the classic, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. Death of a Salesman runs March 12-28, 2015 at Andrew Johnson Theater at Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Tennessee Repertory Theatre has worked with Pulitzer Prize-winners, Tony Award-winners, and Oscar Award-winners (largely through its burgeoning Ingram New Works Project). And now Nashville's flagship professional theatre can add a Heisman Trophy-winner to that list: Eddie George. The former Tennessee Titan will headline the February production of The Whipping Man.

PlayMakers Repertory Company is unafraid to tackle big issues, issues that are polarizing, issues which make audiences uncomfortable. The magic of PlayMakers is their ability to tackle those issues while showing their respect for the intelligence of the audience and trusting audiences to understand the value of taking risks in the theater. This has never been so true as with Clybourne Park.

PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theater in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offers audiences two insightful looks at race and the meaning of home in productions of 'A Raisin in the Sun' and 'Clybourne Park,' to be performed in rotating repertory now through March 3. Get a first look at both productions in the photos below!

There's something magical happening on stage at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill. Their production of John Logan's Red is one which you will not want to miss! The play, which won the Tony Award for best play in 2010, tells the story of painter Mark Rothko and his assistant, Ken. Over the course of two years, the two work together to create art, and to discuss the very nature of life, art, and creation.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

RIGHT CROSS RHAPSODY is an affectionate parody of 1930's-style films, which combines elements of Hollywood boxing melodramas such as Golden Boy and City for Conquest while adding a soupcon of backstage musicals. With riotous jokes, quips, double-entendres this movie parody is bound to please audiences of all ages.

Gorilla Rep Presents The World Premiere of Joan of Arc, Written by Robert Steven Ackerman and Directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson.

Gorilla Rep Presents The World Premiere of Joan of Arc, Written by Robert Steven Ackerman and Directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson.