Jeffrey Ellis - Page 70

Veteran actor Jay Doolittle returns to Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre this spring to reprise his role as Morrie Schwartz in the beloved play based on Mitch Albom's New York Times bestselling memoir, Tuesdays With Morrie, running March 27 - April 11.

Photographer Kenn Stilger and Heavnly Perspective Photography have captured some gorgeous photographic images of Street Theatre Company's production of Memphis the Musical, which opens at Bailey STEM Middle School in Nashville tonight.

This week the spotlight shines on Lauren Frances Johnson, who has made her mark in Music City, performing on stages all over town and sharing the remarkable talents that have won her legions of followers. Charming and gorgeous, she has stage presence to spare and tonight, as she opens as Felicia Farrell in Street Theatre Company's production of Memphis the Musical, she's destined to command the stage like nobody's business!

Oftentimes, in any college town - especially one filled with schools with impressive theater programs - there are talented students who come and go, never making much of an impact on the local scene, keeping their onstage theatrics confined to campus offerings. Not so with Belmont University senior Alie B. Gorrie.

For 40-some years now, Stephen Schwartz's Pippin, the musical about an inquisitive young man in search of meaning in his life - and, notwithstanding, the actual meaning of life - has enraptured audiences, inspired legions of theater devotees and provided any number of young men (and a not insignificant number of young women, either, we suppose) with their go-to audition song in 'Corner of the Sky.'

When you're spending all your time on the road, life can be…well, challenging…even if you are Sasha Allen, who stars as The Leading Player in the completely spectacular and altogether magical national touring company of Pippin, the Tony Award-winning Stephen Schwartz musical that's been mesmerizing audiences all over the country just as certainly as the recent Broadway revival became the talk of the Great White Way.

Today the spotlight shines on University School of Nashville's Aidan Watt, who during his four years at USN has been cast in every production - "aside from Noises Off, which I did tech for," he explains. As part of the amazing theater program at USN, Aidan's been learning from the best: Catherine Coke, whose resume includes work on all levels of professional theater, heads the program, with the estimable Jim Manning, perhaps Nashville's hardest working scenic designer (not to detract from any of the other designers in town, of course, who do great work, but Jim Manning - a 2012 First Night Star Award winner - tends to work on multiple productions for multiple companies at the same time. Whew!), heading technical and design teams.

In its 65th season, Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater company presents an exciting and challenging new revival of playwright William Inge's seminal 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about repressed desires and haunting recriminations: Picnic. Opening Thursday, March 26, at Hillsboro High School Theatre in Nashville, Picnic runs through April 4.

?After four critically acclaimed seasons, Nashville's Blackbird Theater will produce what company founders call their 'magnum opus,' the new musical Myth, set for a world premiere run July 16-26.

Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre has announced plans for its upcoming Musical Theatre Fast Track Performance Camp, as part of its summer production of the musical All Shook Up. Auditions for the show and the camp are slated for Monday, March 16, at 3 p.m. Camp dates are June 22-July 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The camp is designed for a total of 16 students, both males and females ages 12-16, to be double cast in the show. Rehearsals for All Shook Up will be held July 6-23.

It's cloudy and grey in Nashville today, which is perhaps fitting as people from all over gather to mourn the passing of Bernie Arnold, the matriarch of the first family of Nashville theater. But being mournful is the last thing you can come up with when remembering Bernie and her late, devoted husband, Henry Arnold (known as 'Buddy' to his legions of fans, students and admirers). Rather, any memory of the revered pair of theatrical talents is limned with joy, amazement and unbridled admiration.

Everything about Emily Eytchison, a Brentwood native now in her senior year at Nashville's Lipscomb University, says she's an actress. Outgoing and beautiful, quirky and even somewhat introverted (which might seem surprising coming from someone who is so obviously at home in front of an audience), she seems destined to a life theatrical, one filled with wonder, imagination and new discoveries around every piece of scenery…

Now making his home in Florida - while continuing to pursue his almost 50-years-long (he's currently on year number 49) career on stages all over the country, Michael Edwards tells us this week all about his time spent in Nashville and where those years have led him…

Today, we introduce you to Arden Taylor Guice, a 17-year-old high school, whose unique theatrical life sets her apart from others in her age group: She's been a student at Franklin High School, but in her senior year she was lucky enough to gain an internship with the musical theatre program at Belmont University and is now finishing school online. She's also a veteran of Sondra Morton's Act Too Players troupe in Franklin!

A school receives a mysterious script about a girl who died long ago. The director disappears. A new director arrives just in time and knows all about the story of the play. In fact, she seems to know it too well. And how did she get the dead girl's ring? Are the students of Herbert Hoover High too wrapped up in miscues, awful accents, and stolen boyfriends to notice? Revenge is coming. Who will pay the price when the real world and the play collide?

Amanda Grace Creech is one of a kind: Beautiful, talented, outspoken, irreverent - and yet another example of the wealth of talent to be found on college campuses all over the USA and someone of whom Nashville theater can rightfully boast. A native of Stone Mountain, Georgia, she's a student at Nashville's Trevecca Nazarene University and a 2014 First Night Most Promising Actor.

Initial artwork for Circle Players' upcoming production of William Inge's Picnic, with art by Arthur Henry Kirkby IV and graphic design by David Arnold, has been released just as rehearsals get under way for the show's March 26-April 4 run at Nashville's Hillsboro High School.

Today's spotlight falls upon Hume Fogg Academic Magnet High School's Caitlin Oden, who could have been the inspiration for every fictional princess ever: She's blonde, pretty, poised and self-possessed. Even her name - Caitlin Mirabel Oden - has the ring of royalty to it (say it slowly: Princess Caitlin Mirabel...sounds ideal, right?), although Caitlin's down-to-earth and focused on her longterm goals in the theater.

Frigid temperatures that have accompanied this week's ice and snow throughout the South continues to wreak havoc on performance schedules at Middle Tennessee theaters, with some companies already cancelling performances Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and even one Thursday night performance already shuttered.

The Tennessee Performing Arts Center announces the cancellation of this evening's, Wednesday February 18, performance of the national tour of JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT, previously scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in Andrew Jackson Hall. TPAC had previously cancelled the Tuesday evening performance.