Jeffrey Ellis - Page 104

Vali Forrister retuns to the stage for the first time since her 2006 triumph in How I Learned to Drive to lead the cast of Actors Bridge Ensemble and the Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance's production of Frederico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba. Jessika Malone, artistic associate at ABE, directs the cast of Emily Mann's adaptation of Lorca's work which has been described as 'a cross between Downton Abbey and The Bachelor with an added splash of Mommie Dearest.'

With taut, focused direction by Beki Baker and what is arguably the finest cast of actors to be assembled on a Nashville stage in recent memory, Nashville Shakespeare Festival heats winter up to a fever pitch with its remarkable production of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's timeless-and very timely-tragedy rife with unbridled ambition, conspiratorial plotting, revenge and deception.

With a cast filled with some of Nashville's most talented stage performers, director Paul J. Cook's version of Company-now onstage at The Keeton Theatre in a sparkling new production from Circle Players-is brimming over with theatrical riches. But if you had to pick just one from among this cadre of showstopping stars, I'd pick one Ms. Debbie Kraski, whose Joanne in as memorable as any you might have seen, and as heartbreakingly genuine as any you might ever have hoped to witness.

Named as First Night's Outstanding Musical of 2011 was Lipscomb University Theatre's production of Hairspray, directed and choreographed by Justin Boccitto. ACT 1's production of American Buffalo, directed by Ryan Williams, claimed top honors as First Night's Oustanding Play of 2011, and the national touring company's Memphis, the Musical, which played Andrew Jackson Hall at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, was named as First Night's Outstanding Touring Production of 2011, besting productions of Spring Awakening, In The Heights, Wicked and Les Miserables.

With a capacity crowd of 200 people on hand at The Keeton Theatre, First Night founder and executive producer Jeffrey Ellis, who covers theater, opera and dance throughout Tennessee for BroadwayWorld.com, unveiled his choices via First Night's Top 11 of 2011, while the winners of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville and Tennessee Theatre Awards were announced by co-hosts Britt Byrd, Jamie Free, Katherine Sandoval Taylor and Lar'Juanette Williams.

Playwright Nate Eppler, Mas Nashville's FIVE, the Boiler Room Theatre, Lipscomb University's Hairspray, ACT 1's American Buffalo and the national touring company of Memphis, the Musical were the top winners at Sunday night's Midwinter's First Night at Nashville's Keeton Theatre, which also featured the presentation of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville and Tennessee theatre awards.

Playing opposite Rulon as Sophie, the first soprano, is her daughter Emily Appuzzo, a well-known actress and singer in her own right, who is a member of the Nashville Opera Chorus. Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva plays Sharon, the second soprano, and L.T. Kirk is cast as Anthony Candolino. John Todd doubles as musical director for Master Class and plays Manny, the accompanist. Patrick Goedicke completes the cast as a stage hand.

Nate Eppler, the two-time First Night Award winning playwright of Southern Fried Funeral (with Dietz Osborne) and Long Way Down, will unveil his latest stage comedy with the premiere of Modern Love, running January 12-February 12 at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre.

After an intense internal auditing process, the results are in for the 2011 Tennessee Awards! This year's awards broke traffic records and we couldn't be more excited to announce the 2011 BroadwayWorld Tennessee Award winners!

After an intense internal auditing process, the results are in for the 2011 Nashville Awards! This year's awards broke traffic records and we couldn't be more excited to announce the 2011 BroadwayWorld Nashville Award winners!

With an alluring and gorgeous Morticia (played by Broadway diva Sara Gittelfinger) and a charming and swellegant Gomez (Great White Way heartthrob Douglas Sills) leading the charge, the onstage iteration of Charles Addams' cartoon family is surely a dysfunctional lot. But, more importantly, they are enormously winning-their interpersonal relationships are not so unlike your own, I daresay-and composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa and book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have crafted a storyline that broadens the family's appeal, while more deeply etching the family's brand (particularly in these days of all-encompassing marketing ploys) on American pop culture.

Most weddings are all about the bride-her dress, her hair, her flowers. Sometimes there's a passing glance at the groom. But in Alan Ball's play, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, the wedding is all about the guests-or at least about the five women who take refuge in the sister of the bride's upstairs bedroom while the festivities continue below.

Tickets to Studio Tenn's fourth and final production of the 2011-2012 season, The Sound of Music, are now available for patrons who also purchase tickets to their next production, The Miracle Worker, which opens February 23.

Officials with Nashville Opera have announced the company has satisfied all of the conditions established by the Kresge Foundation in their 2008 Challenge Grant and has been awarded $350,000 in late 2011.

Fresh off a successful run in Atlanta, Louie & Ophelia-a new play by Gus Edwards, directed by Synthia Williams-moves to Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre for a January 6-14 run. Starring acclaimed Nashville playwright/actress/director/producer Mary McCallum and well-known Atlanta actor Keith Franklin, the Nashville production is presented by SistaStyle Productions in conjunction with Atlanta's New African Grove Theatre.

The year is 1963, and the Watsons, an African-American family, are taking a road trip from their home in Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama. Fourth grader Kenny's older brother Byron has been hanging with a tough crowd and getting into trouble, so his parents decide to take him to live for a time with his grandmother down south. Soon, the whole family is crowded into the Brown Bomber, heading back to Alabama-and straight into one of the most shocking moments in American history

Sara Gettelfinger may have a resume that other actresses covet-now starring as the mysterious, intriguing, maybe even a little bit frightening Morticia Addams in the national tour of The Addams Family, she's been on Broadway in A Free Man of Color, Seussical the Musical, The Boys from Syracuse, Nine and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and she's toured in Fosse and 101 Dalmatians-but, truth be told, the highlight of her resume for me, at least, is a stint on the storied, now lamented and defunct, CBS soap opera Guiding Light.

Each one a force of nature in her own right, the five women of MAS Nashville unleashed their superpowers and talents upon a Nashville audience for the third time this week with their Christmas Holiday Hangover, a fast-paced (if over-long) tribute to the holiday season that allowed each of the women her moment in the spotlight and which proved, once again, that the quintet know exactly what their audience wants.

Nashville audiences can relax about one particular holiday detail: Those five wonderful women of Mas Nashville are plotting their comeback. Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Melodie Madden Adams, Cori Laemmel and Megan Murphy Chambers return to the stage of the historic Belcourt Theatre on Wednesday, December 28, for A ChristMAS Holiday Hangover, the latest cabaret conquest from the multi-talented quintet of Nashville performers.

Ever wonder how those other Cratchit kids must have felt cast in the shadow of their younger brother Tiny Tim's star-making turn in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? Let's face it, the kid's a ringer: he's lovable, cute and wise beyond his years and his health, or lack thereof, make him a sentimental favorite of audiences - and clearly, a favorite of his parents. While poor Martha is off being apprenticed to a milliner (who, granted, gives her a day off for Christmas), Tiny Tim is treated tenderly and attentively by dear ol' mum and dad (who fairly dotes on his youngest offspring-now even I can understand why my older siblings dislike me so).