Shawn Knight News

Last semester as part of Lab, I was the assistant stage manager (as well as the assistant script coordinator) for Ibsen's A Doll's House. But this semester, I took on an even bigger challenge: the task of assistant directing Ahrens and Flaherty's Lucky Stiff.

Directed with his signature creative flair, boundless imagination and penchant for fun by Benji Kern, Studio Tenn's interim artistic director, Mamma Mia! features a stellar cast of performers bringing the show to life with the expected verve and energy that the ABBA score virtually demands. Led by Erica Aubrey as Donna and Emily Urbanski as her daughter Sophie, Studio Tenn's production is vibrant, colorful and energetic, tapping into the universal appeal of the music thanks to music director/conductor Stephen Kummer and his seven member band who perform the score with consummate professionalism and more than a little Disco-era panache.

Over coffee, on the morning after seeing Verge Theater Company's production of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play - the dark comedy by Anne Washburn, directed by Nashville theater veteran Amanda Card - last weekend, a friend allowed as how he had heard of the play, but had no idea what it was about, asking me for a brief synopsis: "It's about a group of five people in a post-apocalyptic society, presumably brought about by nuclear events across the country, if not the world, who entertain one another with detailed stories based upon episodes from The Simpson," I answered.

Now onstage through Mother's Day (Sunday, May 12) in a much anticipated and gleefully subversive production from Nashville Opera, The Cradle Will Rock remains hard to define: It could be described as a work of art whose meaning, its very raison d'etre, can be bent to suit any conceivable justification. Variously, Blitzstein described his 1937 work as a 'play in music' or an 'opera for actors' and its history clearly paints it as either or even as both.

Before Broadway comes calling for Hatty Ryan King, the young Nashville actress with an enviable resume (the Lipscomb University sophomore is a Spotlight Award winner, was a finalist for The Jimmy Award, has worked with theater companies both community-oriented and professional and has proven herself a capable leading player along the way), you might want to get your tickets to see her onstage in Studio Tenn's ambitious, if woefully uneven, holiday season offering of Beauty and The Beast. In a role that could have been written for her, King shines as Belle, the ambitious and eager to learn and to embrace change young woman who is the heroine of the musical which features a score by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice and a book by Linda Woolverton.

Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, including a number of holiday season offerings to put you in the Christmas spirit, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for December 3, 2018, to help you plot your course through the first few weeks of 2019...

Here's hoping you had a splendid Thanksgiving holiday weekend and that you're settling in for another action-packed season of events and shows to make Christmas 2018 sparkle even more! Looking ahead, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for November 26, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Who'd have thought that a play written in 2000 and based upon a work by Aeschylus from 463 BC (give or take a year or two) would prove to be so timely in the 21st Century? Yet that is exactly what Big Love, a play by Charles Mee, directed by Amanda Card and produced by Tamara Todres, Kristin McCalley and Clayton Landiss, has proven in six performances at a former Methodist Church in Inglewood, delivering a production that challenges preconceived notions about a myriad of issues, ranging from sexism, racism and any number of other "isms" that punctuate our current conversation.

What perfect timing! Kudos to Nashville Children's Theatre executive artistic director Ernie Nolan and education director Alicia Lark Fuss (who does double duty as director of the play) for their impeccable midwinter choice of A Snowy Day as the venerable company's first show of 2018. That they had frigid temperatures and snowy conditions to herald the opening of A Snowy Day, playwright Jerome Hairston's adaptation of four stories by Caldecott winner Ezra Jack Keats, was indeed serendipitous, lending some of Mother Nature's authenticity to the show's launch.

Wonderfully complex - and somehow unexpected and altogether authentic - performances from Sam Ashdown as Hamlet and Cheryl White as his mother Gertrude are enough reason to experience Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of Hamlet (now onstage at Belmont University's Troutt Theatre through Sunday, followed by January 31-February 3 performances at Middle Tennessee State University's Tucker Theatre). But add to their stellar turns, an ensemble comprised of some of the best actors ever to set foot on a local stage, under the self-assured direction of the esteemed Denice Hicks (the company's artistic director), and it practically becomes a requirement for any theater lover within the sound of my voice.

With Nashville Shakespeare Festival's annual Winter Shakespeare production set to open Thursday night Denice Hicks' staging of Hamlet, starring Sam Ashdown actress Cheryl White, who plays Gertrude, found time between rehearsals to talk about the production.

First Night's Top Ten for 2018 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater were revealed last night during a live Facebook broadcast, with the hosts of Midwinter's First Night (Ashley Wolfe, J. Robert Lindsay, Tosha Pendergrast and Ben Pendergrast) announcing the productions and performances recognized among the best of 2017.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT), the nation's oldest professional theatre for young audiences announces the return of its holiday event Cinderella, in what will be the third and final year NCT has produced this wintertime Cinderella. The production runs December 14-21 at Nashville Children's Theatre.

Nashville Shakespeare Festival invites lovers of theater and The Bard to herald the arrival of 2018 and to celebrate the company's 30th Anniversary Season with a sneak peek of the upcoming production of Hamlet during their fifth annual Winter Shakespeare Open House at Belmont University's Troutt Theatre on Sunday, December 31, from 1 to 4 p.m.

Offering a thoroughly delightful and completely entertaining story about welcoming new challenges and living life to its fullest, Mr. Popper's Penguins the charming musical onstage at Nashville Children's Theatre through December 3 also offers its young audiences an intriguing history lesson about life during the Great Depression.

What do you get when you introduce a daydreaming house painter to a dozen delightful penguins? A flipper-flapping musical tale that will make you believe in the power of ingenuity and determination, according to Nashville Children's Theatre's executive artistic director Ernie Nolan, who describes it as a show packed with puppetry, humor, and heart, Mr. Popper's Penguins is bound to put a smile on your face.

What do you get when you introduce a daydreaming house painter to a dozen delightful penguins? A flipper-flapping musical tale that will make you believe in the power of ingenuity and determination, according to Nashville Children's Theatre's executive artistic director Ernie Nolan, who describes it as a show packed with puppetry, humor, and heart, Mr. Popper's Penguins is bound to put a smile on your face.

There is no mistaking the incisive wit of Jane Austen's rather genteel evisceration of the British aristocracy to be found in Sense and Sensibility, the thoroughly delightful and completely engaging adaptation by Kate Hamill that opens Nashville Repertory Theatre's 2017-18 season. In gleeful style, director Rene D. Copeland and her 10-person ensemble bring Hamill's script and Austen's characters to life in a production that might best be described as sparkling and polished.

Nashville Children's Theatre, the nation's oldest professional theatre for young audiences today announces full casting and creative teams for the 2017-2018 season, opening the theater's 87th season - its first with programming designed by new executive artistic director Ernie Nolan.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! Welcome to Friday, June 9, 2017 - we're awfully glad to have you here! It's a big weekend in Nashville, maybe the biggest ever, thanks to the perfect storm of events and celebrations all across the region. It's CMA Music Festival weekend, Bonnaroo is pulsating some miles down the road (taking most of the attendees through Music City on their way to Manchester) and the Nashville Predators take on a team from Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final's sixth game on Sunday night at Bridgestone Arena.