Jeffrey Ellis - Page 74

Myra Stephens has had a busy week, as is wont to happen when tech week descends upon a production, so she can be forgiven for not completely understanding the five questions that comprise our Friday Five, a regular feature designed to introduce members of Tennessee's theater community to the world at-large.

The talent pool is deep here, a fact exemplified by today's young actor featured in HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA: Jess Darnell, an 18-year-old senior at Nashville's Montgomery Bell Academy, who graduates next spring after already amassing an impressive theatrical resume.

Lindy Pendzick and Greg Pendzick, who were resident company members at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse from 2010-13, are now co-cruise directors and headlining performers on the American Empress riverboat with the American Queen Riverboat Company.

Among the leading students in the Fernandez and Baker-led Lipscomb theater program is Tyler Russell, a native of Vancouver, Washington, who has made an impact on local stages, starring as Marius in Lipscomb University Theatre's acclaimed production of Les Miserables in Fall 2013 and as Tony in the company's 2014 fall musical West Side Story.

While the Renaissance Players' mounting might be a little rough around the edges, there's still plenty to recommend the show if you're in need of some Christmas cheer. Directed by Jon Kopischke, with choreography by Alaina Deaver and musical direction by SharonTaylor, Irving Berlin's White Christmas features Jarrod Clark, Zane Jordan, Amanda Mollehour and Tawny Frey as the leading quartet of showbiz types (along with the showstopping Linda Sue Runyeon, who delivers some of the night's best moments) who breathe life into the libretto.

Inspired by all the seasonal festivities that abound, we asked people in the theater community to share their favorite things to see onstage during the run-up to Christmas…

Today, in our third installment of Nashville Theater 101, we introduce you to three more members of the Nashville theater family: Patrick James, April Hardcastle-Miles and Matthew Hayes Hunter. Our questions are fairly basic and to the point: Why do you do theater? And why do you choose Nashville, perhaps best known as the home of country music, as your home base?

Two Guys and a Christmas Tree brings the holiday season to Dickson in the persons of Nick Fair, Michael J. Parker, Marilyn Whitehead Fair and Jenny Norris-Light, a quartet of capable actors and wonderful singers who provide a soundtrack for your seasonal celebrations in a sprightly holiday diversion directed by Greg Frey.

Finding it difficult to get into the holiday spirit? Studio Tenn has the perfect antidote to the grey, cloudy and wet days of early December in Nashville: It's A Wonderful Life-the company's production of the stage adaptation of the iconic holiday film. If it doesn't put you in the right frame of mind, then we suspect nothing will.

As time-and the fates-would have it, Gina D'Arco is back again! With today's feature, if memory serves, Gina is the first performer to do two Friday Fives for us. Have her answers changed? Just as her life has changed, so has her perspective, so of course you're going to learn something new about the young woman who opens tonight as Mary Hatch Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, Springhouse Theatre Company's holiday season offering, running December 5-14.

Charming and exuberant, Karissa is doing the whole senior year experience to the hilt, leading her classmates in their final year at one of the nation's leading high schools, and somehow finding time to pursue her passion of theater.

More importantly, perhaps, since I know where the bodies are buried-both literally and figuratively-I am provided a unique perspective on the personalities that have shaped theater in Tennessee for at least the past 30 years (I was five years old when I started in this gig). Today you will be introduced to one of the finest actors to ever walk onto a Tennessee stage via our brand new feature series…WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Our first subject is Mark Delabarre, who who spoke with us from his home in New York City.

Emma Jordan has been fated to live a life onstage. Growing up in her hometown of Dickson, she was acting on stages throughout Middle Tennessee, starring in shows at the Renaissance Center and appearing onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theater. Now a senior at Ohio's Wright State University in Dayton, where she's studying musical theater, Emma has her sights set on graduation next spring and an acting career thereafter.

Today, in our second installment of Nashville Theater 101, in which we introduce members of the Nashville theater family to the larger theatrical world: Tonya Pewitt, Shawn Whitsell and Denice Hicks.

First Night Award winning playwrights Dietz Osborne and Nate Eppler's Southern Fried Funeral will be featured among productions celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse in 2015.

This week, the High School Drama spotlight falls upon the tremendously versatile Shawn Sookram from Hume-Fogg Academic High School. Having just completed a run in the school's fall production of The King and I, earlier in 2014 he gave a stunning performance as the Emcee in Cabaret.

Although it seems hard to believe, Thanksgiving is this Thursday and as we reflect on the people, places and things that have made us truly happy this year and makes us most thankful, in general, we're also considering what things theatrical for which we are especially grateful in 2014.

You will not believe it! The last time we gave you a Music City Confidential (number seven), the London Olympics were winding up, LaToya Gardner and Kevin Mead were starring in Circle Players' Aida, Maggie Richardson and Cody Rutledge were headlining Xanadu at the Arts Center of Cannon County, and Music City was caught up in Nutty Professor fever! Today marks the return of Music City Confidential and we hope you'll be feeling particularly thankful for edition number 8.

Eric L. Williams is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who calls himself "an eternal student of his craft": acting. Most recently, he was onstage in Lakewood Theatre's production of The Outsiders, but he's also performed in a wide variety of works including Oedipus Rex, Jitney, The Dance on Widow's Row, Macbeth, Fool for Love and The Face of Emmett Till. Among other recent performances, he's had roles in Life to Come, Romeo and Juliet and Pulpits. In addition to acting, Williams writes and directs stage and film projects, and when he not onstage or in front of a camera, he's a blogger, internet marketer and web developer.

Today, in Nashville Theater 101, we're happy to introduce you to three members of our family: Ashley Michelle Diggs, Tom Angland and Memory Strong. We asked our actors some very basic questions-Why do you do theater? And why do you choose Nashville as your home base? This is how they answered.