Jeffrey Ellis - Page 66

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. Thus, we are happy to present a new feature: 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.

It's 1967 and a young Marine, returning from a life-changing experience in Vietnam, is on a bus bound for San Francisco, the site of his last hurrah in 1963: a momentous night before he shipped out for Okinawa in the company of friends and cohorts with whom he'd created a bond he thought would last forever. That initial scene in Dogfight – the hit off-Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and a book by Peter Duchan, based upon a little-known movie of the same name that starred River Phoenix and Lili Taylor – serves as a gateway to the story of Eddie Birdlace and his fellow Marines and a winsome, idealistic young woman who left her imprint on his heart despite his best efforts to forget her.

With an experienced hand guiding a production, you can rest assured that any show - no matter its theatrical lineage or how often it has been revived - will be filled with flashes of creativity and imagination. Case in point: director Jim Manning's mounting of Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God, now onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater as the season-ending production from ACT 1, the company predicated on presenting theater classics for contemporary audiences.

Is there anything more magical or more transformative than live theater? Honestly, I can't think of anything which can take you from the depths of despair to the fanciful heights of imagination so quickly - and there certainly is no art form in which things can change so capriciously or quicker, either for good or bad.

That will also explain my rapturous response to the performance of A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline, a dramatized tribute to the country music superstar that opened at Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theater on Thursday, June 4, running for a much-too-short two weekends at what was once known as The Renaissance Center.

Circle Players will kick-off its 2015-2016 season with the regional premiere of the Bradley Moore-directed rock musical American Idiot, running in August at Tennessee State University's Performing Arts Center.

It's another busy weekend of new shows opening and many others continuing to delight audiences, with ACT 1's Dog Sees God and Street Theatre Company's Dogfight both opening tonight, while two shows that opened yesterday will continue to treat audiences to some especially wonderful music. Plus, there's a whole slate of shows being performed at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse, a revival of Osborne & Epplers' Southern Fried Nuptials down in Woodbury at the Arts Center of Cannon County, and John Chaffin's Cliffhanger enters its final weekend at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre. Go to the theater, young man (and woman) and let yourself be transported to a whole new world of magic and enchantment!

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five: five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. Today, we introduce two actors from Street Theatre Company's production of Dogfight - one of the most eagerly anticipated new musicals we've heard about in the past 25-plus years of covering Nashville/Tennessee theatre - and, judging from their answers to our five questions and our new 'bonus round' question, Audrey Johnson and Jens Jacobson are two names we think you'll be talking about in the coming months

After making millions of fans on TV this year, Clark Beckham, Sumner County's very own 2015 American Idol runner up, surprised participants in Actors Point Theatre Company's musical theater day camp to offer some pointers on stage performance Wednesday.

Inspired by BroadwayWorld.com's Friday Six, welcome to BroadwayWorld Nashville's latest installment of The Friday Five: five questions designed to help you learn more about the talented people you'll find onstage throughout the Volunteer state. Today, in a special edition of The Friday Five (on Thursday), we introduce you to four young actors who will have you in stitches even before you see them in ACT 1's season-ending production of Dog Sees God.

Directors and producers in the Nashville region are seeking actors for upcoming productions of American Idiot, August: Osage County, The Last Five Years, Heathers the Musical and The Music Man. We've gathered the details together here to make your planning easier. This is planned as a regular feature and we invite you to send your audition announcements to Jeffrey Ellis, senior contributing editor, at jeffreyellis37215@att.net for inclusion in this column.

Jenny Norris Light plays Sarah Brown, with Michael Maupins as Sky Masterson, Hallie Long as Miss Adelaide and Brian Best as Nathan Detroit in The Larry Keeton Theatre's eagerly anticipated production of the classic Broadway music Guys and Dolls. Directed by Ginger Newman (who doubles as musical director as well), with choreography and staging by Cary Street, the musical that introduced the theatrical standards 'Bushel and a Peck,' 'Adelaide's Lament' and 'Luck Be A Lady Tonight' to Broadway audiences runs at the Keeton Theatre tonight, June 4, through June 20.

Today, in a special edition of The Friday Five (on Wednesday), we introduce two actors from The Gaslight Dinner Theatre's upcoming production of A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline: Linda Sue Simmons (my favorite Miss Chattanooga of all time) and Curtis LeMoine-Reed. Directed by Greg Frey, the musical - filled with some of Patsy Cline's best-loved hits that will transport you back to her starry heyday in the 1960s - opens Thursday afternoon at The Renaissance Center in Dickson.

No matter what the calendar says, we're in early summer already - insofar as theater in Tennessee is concerned, at least - and there are four new shows opening this week that should command your attention. Along with a number of shows that are continuing their runs (like John Chaffin's Cliffhanger at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre), you have plenty of diverse and intriguing onstage offerings to keep you in the relative, air-conditioned comfort of a darkened theater. We've done the necessary research, made the calls to the people-in-the-know and have included the dates, the phone numbers and the websites to make it as easy as possible for you to buy tickets and go show some support for the arts while indulging in the magic of live theater…

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.

For, make no bones about it: The First Church of Mary, The Repentant Prostitute's Fifth Annual Benefit Concert, Revival and Pot Luck Dinner (or “Prostitute's Picnic,” as it was called by director Martha Wilkinson in her pre-show welcome to the congregants gathered at BLDG Nashville for opening night) deserves bigger audiences, more vociferous acclaim and a life far beyond the walls of the intimate venue in which it was first introduced to the public-at large.

No matter how well you know a show - how easily you can recall plot points or parrot dialogue - it's sometime good to revisit a musical even if you've seen it countless times. Oftentimes it rekindles your love for a show or, hell, it just reminds you how much fun you have every time you see a new revival. So, kudos to director Josh Waldrep and his merry band of mischief makers who bring The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to the stage to conclude Circle Players' 65th season.

The weekend is upon us and that means that tonight is opening night for a couple of new shows (with performances continuing through the weekend) and closing performances of several others, including Newsies (at TPAC), Circle Players' The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the farewell production of GroundWorks Theatre's Starlite Waltz. Meanwhile, John Chaffin's Cliffhanger continues at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre and Cumberland County Playhouse continues its 50th anniversary season with a whole slate of terrific shows.

Subtitled 'a play about Faith, Narcissism, & Red Velvet Cake,' The First Church of Mary (which is how we will refer to it hereafter) allows Davin to don a wig and heels - 'yet again,' according to the show's press release - to play his newest creation Adamenses Huckster, the protagonist of his 'new play (with mus

Jenny Norris Light plays Sarah Brown, with Michael Maupins as Sky Masterson, Hallie Long as Miss Adelaide and Brian Best as Nathan Detroit in The Larry Keeton Theatre's eagerly anticipated production of the classic Broadway music Guys and Dolls. Directed by Ginger Newman (who doubles as musical director as well), with choreography and staging by Cary Street, the musical that introduced the theatrical standards "Bushel and a Peck," "Adelaide's Lament" and "Luck Be A Lady Tonight" to Broadway audiences runs at the Keeton Theatre June 4-20.