Nate Eppler News

It's the most wonderful time of the year for Nashville's theater community: 2017 Sideshow Fringe Festival opened last with #ThrowbackThursdayLive! and continues for two weeks in venues all over town, offering all manner of entertaining and intriguing art to satisfy even the most discerning theater-goer. Among the upcoming events is Eric Butler's The Intoxicated Travels of the Reverend Piano Man, featuring an all-star cast accompanied by live music from WT Davidson and Kevin Madill, on August 4 at 8:30 p.m. at the Darkhorse Theater.

It's the most wonderful time of the year for Nashville's theater community: 2017 Sideshow Fringe Festival opens tonight with #ThrowbackThursdayLive! from 7:30 to 11 p.m. at the Actors' Bridge Studio at Darkhorse Theater. Britt Byrd, winner of Nashville Scene's Best Actress Award, makes her directorial debut with the patriarchy-smashing and gender-bending Marian Or, (The True Tale of Robin Hood), adding to her already illustrious resume of acting accomplishments. She's played everyone from Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Show to the bumbling, buxom Brooke in Noises Off and would-be beauty queen Carnelle Scott in The Miss Firecracker Contest.

Seventh Annual Sideshow Fringe Festival - billed as Nashville's Progressive Performing Arts Event, presented by Sideshow @ Actors Bridge - gathers hundreds of local artists for what promises to be its largest endeavor in its seven-year history. Sideshow Fringe runs July 27 through August 6 at various Nashville locales.

Nashville Repertory Theatre is now accepting submissions for the nationally recognized Ingram New Works Lab through July 24, 2017.

The darkly comic and harrowing story of Maybelline Ferris, a damaged young woman living with her pregnant sister Saralee and her forlorn husband, Duke, in their run-down family home north of Nashville. As the play begins, Karen, a close friend of Maybellines jailed older sister, marches into the house with the news that Doolee James kid came into Kindercastle today with a black eye. Doolee is beating her child. That accusation starts a chain of events that set the entire Ferris family into a downward spiral towards the plays stunning conclusion.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! Live life dramatically: It's Friday, May 12, 2017 - graduation day at Vanderbilt University - which prompts the musical question: 'Does it always have to rain on that day? This day, in particular?' Truly it's a FREAKY FRIDAY tradition, if the grads are donning caps and gowns at Vandy, chances are everyone else will be carrying their umbrellas with them in Music City.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! Welcome to Wednesday, May 10, 2017…which prompts us to ask the musical question: Who remembers the Saturday Night Massacre back in the 1970s, during which Richard Nixon fired the special Watergate prosecutor and all hell seemed to break loose (even more than it had already) in Washington, D.C.?

Nashville Repertory Theatre announces the lineup for the 2017 Ingram New Works Festival taking place in Nashville from May 10 -20, 2017.

Five new plays - including one by Christopher Durang - will be unveiled in Music City next month, as Nashville Repertory Theatre today announces the lineup for the 2017 Ingram New Works Festival taking place in Nashville May 10 -20.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! And a gracious good morning to Kate Adams Kramer, our very first Theaterati cover girl! Today we are pondering the theatrical question of 'Kevin Spacey...Tony Awards host...what the hell?' Perhaps you might opine about that bit of news and share your impressions with us: we promise not to tell a soul!

Playwrighting Awards and Ghostlight Project

Opening tonight at Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater is multi-hyphenate Jeff Swafford's (he's a playwright-producer-filmmaker-director, among other things) play Crazy All These Years, which stars a cast of Nashville's best-known actors, including Jennifer Richmond, Michael Adock, Cinda McCain and Daniel Hackman.

Nashville Repertory Theatre Playwright-in-Residence Nate Eppler has been awarded the 2017 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright. The award was presented at the 41st Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville on April 8.

Originally shot as a film featuring local actress Cinda McCain, Crazy All These Years is a poignant yet humorous look at life, death and the damage caused by running away from the past. This new drama, described as 'quiet and compelling,' focuses on Ben, a gay man who returns to his small Tennessee hometown to care for his cantankerous dying mother. As they struggle to understand one another, Ben must also examine his previous relationships and the broken hearts left in his wake.

Writer/producer/director Jeff Swafford debuts Crazy All These Years, the stage version of his screenplay which he made into a film last year, at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre next week for an April 13-22 run. Starring Cinda McCain, Michael Adcock, Jennifer Richmond and Daniel Hackman, Swafford's play is one of Spring 2017's most eagerly anticipated productions.

The darkly comic and harrowing story of Maybelline Ferris, a damaged young woman living with her pregnant sister Saralee and her forlorn husband, Duke, in their run-down family home north of Nashville.

Woodland Entertainment founder Jeff Swafford will bring his new play Crazy All These Years from the screen to the stage of Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater April 13-22, starring Cinda McCain, Michael Adcock, Jennifer Richmond and Daniel Hackman.

Nashville Repertory Theatre Playwright-in-Residence Nate Eppler has been named a finalist for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2016.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2016.

Gracie McGraw, Molly Balsam and Jenna Pryor opened Act Two of the awards show with a medley of Hamilton-inspired songs.