Shawn Knight 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.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Thus, we are happy to present the return of one our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come. Something's missing? That's an easy fix: just send us a message here, on Facebook, or by email at jeffreyellis37215@att.com.

Halloween's all done in, there are still three weeks ahead before we officially give thanks, and Christmas - and all its accompanying frenzy and frivolity - is about seven weeks away! So what's there to do for all the theatrical types jonesing for a trip to make believe? Plenty! Theater companies all over middle Tennessee are showing off their best and brightest, with a number of eagerly anticipated shows opening this weekend and/or continuing from their earlier opening nights and next Tuesday there's a sparkling new Broadway musical swinging through Music City to entertain you…

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.

Why do you do theater? We've been putting that question to members of the Nashville theater famiy for the past month to find out what it is that motivates creative types to pursue an illusory and challenging career, while for others the theater gives them a creative avocation that helps keep them sane. Today, in our latest installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce two more members of our wildly divergent, almost prototypically dysfunctional theater family: James Rudolph and Shawn Knight.

Nashville Children's Theatre this season-during the run of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown-has understandably selected Project Linus as its annual holiday season charity, inviting audiences to become involved in the process.

Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroder and the irresistible Snoopy-the whole Peanuts gang-present their familiar scenarios and foibles for Middle Tennessee families, when Nashville Children's Theatre performs You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, beginning today, November 1 and running through December 23.

Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroder and the irresistible Snoopy-the whole Peanuts gang-present their familiar scenarios and foibles for Middle Tennessee families, when Nashville Children's Theatre performs You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, beginning November 1 and running through December 23.

Nashville Children'sTheatre will unveil its second student summer musical production on July 27 and 28 with Avenue Q: School Edition, based on the original Broadway hit and Tony Award-winning musical by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT) will be revamped-for one night only-for the 21 and up crowd on the evening of Friday, December 9, when the theater holds Big Kid Night, "because kids shouldn't have all the fun," featuring a performance of Junie B. In Jingle Bells, Batman Smells!, starring Brooke Bryant as the irrepressible first grader Junie B. Jones.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT) will be revamped-for one night only-for the 21 and up crowd on the evening of Friday, December 9, when the theater holds Big Kid Night, "because kids shouldn't have all the fun," featuring a performance of Junie B. In Jingle Bells, Batman Smells!, starring Brooke Bryant as the irrepressible first grader Junie B. Jones.

When Circle Players presents the Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newly musical Willy Wonka, running October 14-30 at the Keeton Theatre in Donelson, the audience will be exposed to plenty of sugary treats. After all, the stage adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic story is mostly set in a magical chocolate factory where its owner, Willy Wonka, is checking out possible heirs to his candy empire. He puts his young candidates through a series of character tests which only one boy, Charlie Bucket, passes.

Producing theater for younger audiences since 1931, Nashville Children's Theatre is the oldest children's theater in the United States, so you'd think the company had already done everything - at least once. But this summer, thanks to a new initiative of NCT's education department, students in grades 6 through 12 will perform a fully-staged production of Once Upon A Mattress July 29 and 30 as the culmination of the Emerging Actors summer drama camp.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT) will host Telling Tales: A SHELebration Where the Sidewalk Ends on Thursday, June 2, 2011 - a brand new fundraiser event for grown-ups that features a varied collection of Nashville artists, leaders and performers paying tribute to Shel Silverstein.

Tennessee Repertory Theatre has announced its schedule for the Martha R. Ingram New Works Festival.

For audience members wondering how the memorable, albeit short, tale can possibly be translated to musical theater, NCT producing artistic director Scot Copeland has some succinct pre-curtain advice: 'Just wait and see.' You'll be so glad you did. Its brevity notwithstanding, the story is winsomely engaging, using the text of Brown's book as a springboard to take younger audiences deeper into a wonderland of imaginative, inspirational fun - and there are some quietly expressed lessons conveyed in the process.