Rachel Agee News

Nashville Rep presents a staged reading of the quirky comedy Beyond Therapy by Christopher Durang at a REPaloud in partnership with OZ Arts Nashville today, January 14, 2017. A revealing talkback with Tony award-winning playwright Durang, the cast, director, and audience immediately follows the reading.

A capacity crowd filled The Keeton to witness the no-holds-barred evening, hosted by Julia Marie Nettles, Jenna Pryor, Austin Jeffrey Smith and Taylor Tracey. Arron Holman worked the crowd during the evening to provide insight for the coming theatrical season in Nashville.

Studio Tenn and Tennessee Performing Arts Center's joint venture to produce Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita in Nashville resulted in the production claiming the top prize as "Outstanding Musical of The Year" at Sunday's Midwinter's First Night event at The Larry Keeton Theatre. Nashville Repertory Theatre's production of Nate Eppler's original play Good Monsters took the title of "Outstanding Play of The Year" in the annual ceremony that dates back to its origins in 1989.

First Night's Top Ten of 2017 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater - were revealed tonight during a live Facebook broadcast at 7:30 p.m. (CST), with Actor's Bridge Ensemble and Studio Tenn/TPAC leading the nods in this year's listing of categories.

Nashville Rep presents a staged reading of the quirky comedy Beyond Therapy by Christopher Durang at a REPaloud in partnership with OZ Arts Nashville on Saturday, January 14, 2017. A revealing talkback with Tony award-winning playwright Durang, the cast, director, and audience immediately follows the reading.

Tony Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang - this season's Ingram New Works Fellow at Nashville Repertory Theatre - will be on hand for a reading of his quirky comedy, Beyond Therapy, on Saturday, January 14, 2017, at OZ Arts Nashville.

Rachel Agee's bravura performance - which, arguably, any actor would love to add to a resume - as a fictionalized Tonya Harding-like personality is enough to guarantee that audiences will continue to talk about the world premiere production of Nate Eppler's latest work, The Ice Treatment, for years to come.

Two Broadway veterans join with a group of seven of Tennessee's most enduring, influential and outstanding theater artists to comprise the Class of 2016 First Night Honorees, who were revealed Monday night during the annual First Night preview party, hosted by First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis.

Hear ye, hear ye…Music City Confidential is back! Which means, of course, that I've heard an awful lot of scuttlebutt since last week's column went live on the interwebs - or, more likely, that I am trying to avoid boring and mundane stuff like packing - I'll let you decide what my motivation truly is...

At long last, Music City Confidential is back to help you get caught back on the talk of the town - all the news that's fit to print about the Nashville theater community - and to immerse you in the minutiae of life in Theater City (a term we've been trying to copyright since we were in junior high with Thespis, Aristophanes and Martha Wilkinson).

Shows are opening (Carolyn German unveils her latest, Go From Here, and Nashville Ballet revives Carmina Burana, both this weekend), shows are closing (your last chance to catch The Taffetas at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre before they go the way of The Plaids is this weekend) and The Miss Firecracker Contest is back onstage at Donelson's Larry Keeton Theatre for the second of three weekends. Obviously, the 2016 theater season continues to reveal itself at a breakneck pace, giving audiences a veritable buffet of offerings from which to choose.

Delving into the deeply complex culture of Russian life and history - and the fanciful, yet somehow disturbing, tales that have inspired and informed Russian literature for centuries - Miroshnik's equally complex play offers an intriguing and entertaining treatise on that literature, brought to life with contemporary twists and turns that make the stories more accessible to modern theater-goers, while inviting comparisons and contrasts of Russia in the 21st century with the ancient Tsarist era and the hardships of the Communist years of the last century.

Actors Bridge Ensemble's 20th anniversary season continues in April with the Nashville premiere of Meg Miroshnik's The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, directed by Leah Lowe and running April 15-23 at the Belmont Black Box Theater.

The Writing Room, an extension of Nashville Rep's Ingram New Works Festival, was created to nurture local playwrights. On December 7, 8, and 9 and December 14 and 15 scripts from this project will be presented as staged readings for the public.

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.

Nashville's acclaimed Sideshow Fringe Festival gets under way next Thursday, so what better way to get ready for this year's event than by looking back at 2014's opening night events, captured in a series of photographs by Wesley Duffee-Braun. If 2014 looked this good...what does 2015 have in store?

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.

Looking for a way to beat the heat this weekend? What's better than sinking into a seat in a darkened auditorium and letting the talented actors onstage whisk you way to a whole different world from the world iin which you toil Monday through Friday? Theater companies throughout the midstate are ready to dazzle you with their latest productions and here are some of this weekend's best bets...