Jeffrey Ellis - Page 21

Today, The Thursday Five(+1) shines the spotlight on four members of the Chaffin's Barn cast of Newsies - David Ridley, Samantha Blake, Natalie Rankin and Kayla Petrille - who took time out from their rigorous regimen of rehearsals to tell our readers more about themselves and to offer their own suggestions for why you should come see their show, which runs through October 22.

Nashville's own Broadway star, actress, recording artist and American Idol alum Diana DeGarmo will join the holiday spectacular Peter Pan and Tinker Bell - A Pirate's Christmas presented by Tennessee Performing Arts Center and the Lythgoe Family Panto December 13-23 in TPAC's James K. Polk Theater.

Ernie Nolan and his stellar crew of theatrical collaborators at Nashville Children's Theatre once again prove their mettle with a production worthy of adulation and acclaim, thanks to their world premiere of the TYA (theater for young audiences) version of the recent Broadway musical Tuck Everlasting. Based on Natalie Babbitt's 1975 novel - long considered one of the finest works ever written expressly for young readers - Tuck Everlasting is a thing of beauty, whether onstage or on the page, and audiences unfamiliar with either the book or the play are in for an emotional, thought-provoking journey that reverberates long after the final bows ring down the show's curtain.

Take Belmont University musical theatre major Liam Searcy, for example: He close Frankenstein, along with his cast and crewmates at Studio Tenn a scant two weeks ago and coming up this Friday night, he is among the talented ensemble of actors who will open The Civil War at Nashville's Street Theatre Company.My name is Liam Searcy and I am a Musical Theatre Major at Belmont University. Searcy is just one of the many students who learned early the necessity of staying on top of their academic load while pursuing their theatrical aspirations - all in hopes of a successful career spent in performance.

Managing to find time amid a typically busy week in Crossville, actors Weslie Webster and Lauren Marshall - who play Mrs. Lovett and the neighborhood beggar woman, respectively - graciously agreed to submit to The Tuesday 5(+1) and to answer our questions with enough candor and intrigue to ensure audiences come see their show!

Heathers, the off-Broadway musical by Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy based on the 1989 cult classic film of the same name, wraps up its sold-out run today at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts, offering audiences an outrageously fun and on-target treatise on mean girls and caught up in the gravitational pull of their starpower at a fictional Ohio high school.

Despite some opening night technical problems, inconsistent sound issues and a lack of confidence performing Elizabeth Krebs' choreography, Mary Poppins - the musical theater version of the Disney film that was inspired by P.L. Travers' stories which, in turn, were loosely inspired by her own childhood adventures - opened to a rousing ovation from the audience at Smyrna's Springhouse Theatre Company Friday night.

The National Playwrights Conference was established in 1964 as the founding program of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Led by NPC Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg, the conference supports playwrights during the creation and development of new plays. Writers of selected works will receive a July 2019 residency with a stipend, housing, meals, and transportation to support an intensive rehearsal process and two script-in-hand public readings with a professional cast and creative team.

There's just something about Kristin Chenoweth. It's almost undefinable, perhaps even undescribable, yet as with any writer's efforts to put into words how remarkable the woman behind the image is, I'll give it my best shot, attempting to encapsulate the wonder that is Kristin Chenoweth in 2,000 words or less (but if I go over, don't judge too harshly - I'm simply stating the facts that prove the folly of my initial hypothesis).

Daniel DeVault has been named founding artistic director for the Nashville-based Humanity Theatre Project. The Music City native will helm the organization as it moves toward is first full season of theater. A graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, DeVault holds a Bachelor of Arts in theatrical performance and design with a concentration in communications. He has since made his career as a theater professional in Middle Tennessee having worked with such companies as Nashville Repertory Theatre, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater, Circle Players, and Southern Stage Productions, among others.

Managing to find time amid a hectic tech week, actor Brett Mutter - who plays Beadle Bamford - graciously agreed to submit to The Friday 5(+1) and to answer our questions, hopefully, intriguing potential audience members with some background about his theatrical career and to explain why he thinks you should reserve your tickets now for Sweeney Todd.

Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre transports audiences back to Baltimore - the capital of big hair and the city of big dreams - in 1962 with their production of Hairspray, now onstage through September 29. This weekend (which features the company's annual fundraising gala on Saturday night) kicks off the second weekend of the show's multi-week run in Historic Downtown Clarksville.

Heathers The Musical, based on the classic 1980s cult film of the same name, concludes its run at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts this weekend. Directed by Rachel Jones, the show - which has played to sell-out audiences during its first two weekends, features a cast of talented actors who are having the time of their young lives while bringing the story to life onstage.

Make no mistake about it: School of Rock isn't your mum's - nor your nan's - Andrew Lloyd Webber musical extravaganza. There are no massive chandeliers to come crashing into the orchestra, no fascist dictators to fear, no silent screen divas yearning for a comeback, nor are there are any human-sized felines staring at you across the footlights. Nope, Sir Andrew (as he's known across the pond) has crafted an energetic rock musical that's based on a movie that starred Jack Black and it will rock your freakin' socks off!

Actress Crystal Kurek returns to a role some contend she was destined from birth to play, as she stars as the eponymous "practically perfect" nanny in Disney and Cameron Macintosh's Mary Poppins, opening this Friday night at Springhouse Theater in Smyrna. And who better than Crystal to help us bring another season of the Friday 5(+1) series back to BroadwayWorld Nashville?

Karissa Wheeler's senior year at The University of the South/Sewanee has only just started, but already she's caught up in the whirlwind of a typical – for her, especially – packed and rather crazy schedule, immersed in classes while moving into rehearsals for what may be the most demanding role in which she's ever been cast: Sally Bowles in the iconic Kander and Ebb musical, Cabaret, which is based on John Van Druten's play I Am A Camera, which in turn is inspired Christopher Isherwood's memoir (Goodbye to Berlin) of his years as a struggling young writer in the heady days of Weimar Germany.

Never before have audiences responded with such startling enthusiasm and thunderous applause to a Nashville Repertory Theatre opening night - at least in my memory and I've been reviewing shows at the Rep for 30 years now - than what I witnessed last night as Avenue Q kicked off the company's 2018-19 season in astonishingly irreverent style. Theater historians would have a hard time finding a production in which Nashville Rep audiences had a better time celebrating diversity and internet porn while watching two puppets have unbridled and unrestrained sex even if they lack some of the parts necessary to consummate the act.

Country comedy legend Minnie Pearl is brought to life thanks to Minnie Pearl: All The News From Grinder's Switch, a musical comedy revue making its debut this weekend at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in a very limited, four performance engagement through September 13. Directed with obvious respect by Joy Tilley Perryman and featuring a top-flight ensemble of tremendously talented actors, the newly created show from Belmont University professor and music historian Don Cusic takes a lovingly nostalgic look at the show business career of Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, the Hickman County native who rose to the top ranks of country stardom with the comic creation of her alter ego.

Actress Lexie Dorsett Sharp remembers very clearly when the father of a former castmate came backstage after an opening night during a national tour in which the two women were performing to wish them well and to express how much he enjoyed the show.