Birth Place: Nashville
Thus, we are happy to present one of 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
Thus, we are happy to present one of 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 2016 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.
News spread quickly among Nashville-area theaterati last week: Denice Hicks would be taking the stage of Belmont University's Troutt Theater to take on what could conceivably be her greatest theater challenge: Playing King Lear in the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of the Shakespeare tragedy which had opened a week earlier.
Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.
Theatrical surprises and sneak previews of upcoming productions of veteran director Tim Larson's Sister Act, from Nashville's Circle Players - Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization - and Center for the Arts' Dreamgirls, directed by 2012 Most Promising Actor Matthew Hayes Hunter, will highlight Sunday's Midwinter's First Night.
Just when you thought it was safe to fill the stockings by the chimney with care, Music City Theatre Company presents The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, a Christmas-themed theatrical diversion by playwright Jeff Goode, in which the eight reindeer - yep, those eight reindeer - dish about the real Santa Claus and all the accompanying scandals and hoopla that will have you talking about the big guy and his entourage until long past December 25.
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.
Justin Boyd, Britt Byrd, Katherine Morgan and Taylor Novak will team up to host 2016 Midwinter's First Night - set for Sunday night, January 10, 2016 - and to ride herd on First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis for the presentation of the BWW Nashville Awards and the presentation of First Night's Top 10 of 2016.
Once again, it's that time of year: a period of reflection and introspection that gives us all the perfect opportunity to express our gratitude for the things in our lives that have meant the most to us in 2015. We reached out to members of our theater community, to inquire about that which they are thankful for and we got some very heartfelt, considered romances that, leavened by the humor injected from some of our favorite people, gives us added insight into the psyche of the artistic and creative-minded people who make theatrical magic every day…
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.
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.
Might I offer some perhaps unsolicited advice? If you are dreading the upcoming holidays - Thanksgiving is just under three weeks away and Christmas is fast on its heels - and the typical upheaval precipitated by a trip 'over the river and through the woods' into the bosom of your family's particular brand of dysfunction, perhaps taking in a performance of ACT 1's production of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County would help you to gain some much-needed perspective. Because, trust me, your family (no matter how off-the-rails they may be at any given moment) can only compare favorably to the extended Weston clan of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
Leading the cast are three stage veterans who have been delighting local audiences for years: Debbie Kraski, Dietz Osborne and Layne Sasser, three names that are sure to attract the attention of theater-goers in the Nashville area. They agreed to take on our Friday Five questions in anticipation of tonight's opening, giving answers we feel certain will encourage you to go see them in their latest onstage adventure.
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.
It's Halloween weekend and every dramatic personage and theatrical type we've ever encountered is caught up in the annual rush to find just the right costume for their holiday revelries (we confess we've never had the knack for coming up with Halloween get-ups - not since we went in drag to a party at the First Baptist Church as the age of 12…tongues were wagging, we are certain, but we lived to tell about it, so it couldn't have been that bad). In the meantime, there are all sorts of onstage happenings this weekend to keep you otherwise engaged should the difficulty of selecting your costume prove to be too much.
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.
Tracy Letts' acclaimed play about a dysfunctional family coming to terms with one another - August: Osage County - opens at Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater on November 6, directed by Bradley Moore and featuring a veritable who's who of Nashville actors. August: Osage County, running through November 21, is presented by ACT 1 as its second show of the 2015-16 season.
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