Jeffrey Ellis - Page 39

Larry Shue's The Nerd brings with it a fairly healthy and reasonably impressive theater pedigree: more than 400 performances on Broadway, critical acclaim and audience adulation for its West End run (in fact, it was the most successful American play running there in 1986), scores of regional and community theater productions and it was the follow-up to his wonderfully funny and politically prescient The Foreigner. But like so many things that were popular during the 1980s - the "abdominizer," Cabbage Patch kids and friendship bracelets, Jelly shoes and Jordache jeans - time hasn't been so great to The Nerd and we're left wondering, incredulously and imploringly, "What the hell?"

We managed to corner Vickie and three of her actors - Drew Sanford, Tabby Ragland and Mandy Ray-Jones - and convince them to answer our famous Friday 5 (+1) questions, giving us some insight into why they do what they do (and how they do it), as well as to offer up some suggestions about why you should make certain you don't miss their show…

Today, in our latest Friday 5 (+1), we introduce you to a group of Belmont University Musical Theatre leading ladies - Katie Bays, Emily Anne Ludwig, Lizzy Hinton, Cassie Donegan, Mary Kate Hughes and Katie Grogg - and their leading man, the Franklin Hart Jr. of this particular revival, Graham Trout! Remember their names, gentle readers, they are sure to impress you now over on Belmont Boulevard just as much as they are destined to dazzle critics and audiences (in theaters along other notable streets) alike in the years to come…

Actor James David West, who takes on the role of the Southern lawyer at the center of the play, took time from his hectic tech week schedule to answer our Friday 5 (+1) questions to give us an idea why booking reservations to see the show should be something to do right this minute - or at least after reading this interview. Get to it!

Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Cori Anne Laemelle, Melodie Madden Adams and Megan Murphy Chambers - collectively known as MAS Nashville - return to the stage for their tenth cabaret performance appropriately entitled MAS X, playing the Belcourt Theatre on Monday, April 17. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m.

Hell week or no, Natalie Risk somehow found the time in a crazy week of technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals and classes to sit down and answer our slate of six Friday 5 (yes, we know the name is confusing - not to mention it's Thursday) in order to give you some insight into what makes her tick, theatrically speaking, and to explain why she thinks you need to come see her new show…

Deborah Cox, the Grammy Award-nominated R&B and pop music star now headlining the national tour of The Bodyguard - the stage musical based upon the 1992 film - proves herself to be every inch the star. From the very first moment she appears onstage, clad in Tim Hatley's eye-popping costume as 'Queen of the Night,' Cox carries with her that unmistakable, but hard to define, quality that sets her apart from mere mortals.

Casey Gill Summar, executive director of Nashville's Arts & Business Council's (ABC), has announced that she will be leaving the arts nonprofit this summer after more than a decade with the organization. She and her husband, Trent, are moving to Santa Barbara, California in June.

After some 2,200 performances as the legendary Bob Crewe in the Broadway company of Jersey Boys, Jonathan Hadley is more than happy - maybe even contented - to update his resume with the words "journeyman actor," as he adds the role of Sy Spector in The Bodyguard to the list of roles for which he is justifiably well-known.

The hilarity of the Futrelle clan and their own special brand of Southern Hospitality opens Friday night, March 24, running through April 8 at The Arts Center of Cannon County.

Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts presents the regional premiere of A Time to Kill, based on the bestselling novel by John Grisham and the 1996 film starring Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson, opening Friday night, March 24 and running through April 2.

My Father's War: A Story of Conflict, Survival, and Grace. adapted and performed by 2014 First Night Honorees Carol Ponder and Robert Kiefer from the WWII memoir Ponder Anew, written by Lt. Herschel Ponder, will be performed Fridays and Saturdays, March 24, 25, 31 and April 1 and Sunday, March 26, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 3100 Murfreesboro Pike in Nashville.

Daniel DeVault's taut, focused direction and consistent performances from his ensemble of actors are the hallmarks of Circle Players' latest show in their 2016-17 season - Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Clybourne Park - now onstage, appropriately and significantly at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, named for one of Nashville's most venerated civil rights leaders through April 2.

Featuring a quintet of charming and engaging players, under the deft and focused direction of Everett Tarlton, Seeing Stars in Dixie (which winds up a month-long run at The Barn this coming Sunday, March 19) is the kind of laugh-out-loud funny that only comes from the heart, as it relates the story of a group of people in Natchez, Mississippi, circa 1956, who are caught up in all the hoopla and hullabaloo of a movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, being made right over yonder. It's based in fact: Taylor, Clift, Lee Marvin, Eva Marie Saint and all the accompanying Hollywood types came to Natchez to film Raintree County, a Southern gothic tale that transformed the sleepy, small town into a veritable beehive of Tinsel Town talk and celebrity hijinks.

Cast members - the hardest working man in Music City show business Patrick Kramer and the outrageously funny Katie Bruno - from director Jason Tucker's cast found time from their rigorous rehearsal schedule to take on our Friday 5 (+1) questions to offer us some insider information about the show and what makes them tick, after a theatrical fashion.

Today, three members of director Daniel DeVault's cast - Chandra J. Walton, M. Caroline Prince and Ethan Treutle - offer some insight into their creative process in Friday 5 (+1): Clybourne Park.

We were finally able to track him down and ask him to help our readers learn more about him via our Getting to Know… feature while he was on a trip to Ireland where he represented NCT at an international conference on theater for younger audiences. In fact, Nolan's been so peripatetic since settling down in Nashville and starting his job on February 1, that he answered our queries from the airport in Belfast…

Make no bones about it: the mind and imagination of playwright Tony Kushner (whose Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is playing at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre, in a new production of from ACT 1) is nothing like yours or mine or that guy sitting at the table by the window at your neighborhood Starbucks, tip-tap-typing away at his laptop in hopes of capturing lightning in a bottle with his words or that woman waxing philosophical about the current political climate in this country while recapping the latest happenings on her favorite TV series for some obscure website.

Woodland Entertainment founder Jeff Swafford will bring his new play Crazy All These Years from the screen to the stage of Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater April 13-22, starring Cinda McCain, Michael Adcock, Jennifer Richmond and Daniel Hackman.

In the quarter century since Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes first exploded upon the theatrical scene, much has changed about society's response to AIDS, homosexuality, politics and life in general. But, perhaps most startling has been the way in which things have remained the same during the 25-plus years since its 1991 debut on a stage in California.