Jeffrey Ellis - Page 58

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.

How wonderful is it that a song can usher in all sorts of memories - perhaps of your first kiss, driving in a car along a dusty country road, or of people once-loved, still-loved, who are no longer a part of your life - to flood your mind, fill your heart and to transport you, as if by magic, to some earlier time? I love that feeling, which we in the theater are subject to far more often than regular folk, thanks to the music that underscores our dramatic lives and which allows everyone onstage, offstage, backstage - in whatever stage of life - to indulge in the play of 'make believe.'

Thomas Harton has come a long way since his high school days in Nashville - and you can be certain that once he graduates from Oklahoma City University, he'll be going even further.

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!

Gimme a chorus line of gorgeous girls with gams up to here, a tap-dancing mob of darkly handsome wise guys, a serious lady of the theater whose teeth marks may be found all around a stage set - place them amid a whimsical and altogether unbelievable plot as thin as the best of the old-time movie musicals, complete with a score of tuneful hits from the jazz age, then throw 'em a laugh-out-loud funny script by Woody Allen - and I am in musical theater nirvana.

Reprising a Music City holiday tradition - while providing plenty of laughs for Black Friday - Nashville Repertory Theatre brightens the season with its A Christmas Story, opening November 27, at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theater at Tennessee Performing Arts Center and running through December 20.

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.

Caroline Davis' tour-de-force performance as American poet Emily Dickinson distinguishes the current production of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst - onstage through November 22 at The Filming Station Downtown, in a delightful revival helmed by veteran director Melissa Carrelli - and, clearly, is reason enough to make seeing the show an absolute must for theater devotees.

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.

Things are sure to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious this weekend, as Mary Poppins - the practically perfect in every way nanny - flies over the housetops of London, lading in Woodbury at The Arts Center of Cannon County. Directed by Allison Hall, the award-winning musical runs for three weekends at ACCC, starring Alice Matlock Clements as Mary Poppins and Scott Willis as Bert, the nimble-footed chimney sweep.

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…

Today in a Friday Five (on Thursday!) feature, we shine our spotlight on Catherine Birdsong Broyles and Darci Wantiez, who offer some insight into their theater lives and give us some terrific answers to our five (well, six really) questions. Once you've gotten to know them better, you'll probably want to make sure you have tickets to see the incredible quartet over the next two weekends.

As members of the Nashville theater community join with members of the theaterati far-flung across the world to celebrate the 20th birthday of Actors Bridge Ensemble - the cutting-edge, forward-thinking, boundary-pushing, status quo-challenging theater company that has helped to make Music City USA somehow more creative and more welcoming to artisans who flock here to pursue their dreams - we are reminded of the company's early days and the days even before that when we first came to know of a young woman named Vali Forrister.

Directors and producers in the Nashville region are seeking actors for upcoming productions of The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Sunset Boulevard, Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts' Dreamgirls, Arts Center of Cannon County's Memphis the Musical and ACT 1's production of Will Enos' The Flu Season. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. So now you have no excuse: go follow your dream!

Next up for Daron Bruce's students at Hume-Fogg Academic High School (one of the nation's highest rated secondary schools) is a much-anticipated production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, running November 5-7 at the iconic and historic high school - located on Broadway, naturally - in downtown Nashville. Taking on the challenge of portraying Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, is Andrew Forbes, who is in today's High School Drama spotlight.

In Of Mice and Men, writer John Steinbeck relates the tale of two lifelong friends whose hard-scrabble lives are played out against the backdrop of the Great Depression: two men whose bleak existence is made even more challenging by the cruel realities of the world at that time. Since its publication in 1937, Steinbeck's slim novella has inspired artists to offer different interpretations of the story - to varying degrees of success, to be certain - including numerous film versions, a Carlisle Floyd opera, ballets and stage productions, including a recent Broadway run and, closer to home, a production now onstage from Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization.

Candace Quarrels' story is one of those hard-to-believe show business tales that is likely to resonate with so many people, for so long, that it might become legendary in time. In fact, it may be the modern day equivalent to the age-old tale of a young, sweater-clad Lana Turner being discovered at a lunch counter in Schwab's drugstore in L.A. (back in the day when aspiring starlets had lunch at drug store soda fountains) and being transformed into a movie star - who, interestingly enough (especially for this story), became a legend.

If Lipscomb University musical theatre student Sarah Zanotti, a senior from Cleveland, Ohio, seems busier than normal this week, it should be understandable: Not only is she hurtling toward the end of semester with the rest of the students on the school's gorgeous Green Hills campus, but she's also starring in the fall musical Into the Woods.

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.