Always Moving Forward, ACTORS BRIDGE Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary Season

Although it may be difficult to fathom, but Actors Bridge Ensemble - one of Nashville's edgier and most progressive theater companies from its inception - is in the midst of its 20th anniversary season with a continued focus on presenting provocative and challenging theater for local audiences under the watchful eye of producing artistic director Vali Forrister and her band of artisans. Actors Bridge was honored in 2012 with the First Night Award for Outstanding Theater Company.

Always considered a "theatre with guts," Actors Bridge is, in reality, "a collective of artists committed to taking big risks in the service of a brighter future for our neighbors and a pioneer in Nashville's cultural terrain, courageously staging regional and world premieres of the most provocative - and most important - stories of our times. "

Established in the 1990s by Forrister and founding artistic director Bill Feehely, Actors Bridge came about as an alternative to existing companies in Music City, as well as an entity to bring new and exciting plays to local stages.

"When Bill and I started Actors Bridge, it was a marriage of two dreams. Bill saw a need to create a professional actor training program, and I wanted to bring to my hometown the kind of plays I was seeing in New York and Chicago but never played in Nashville," recalls Forrister, a 2011 First Night Star Award winner.

"I believed then (and still do) that I am called to reflect my city back to itself through public performance which can often mean bringing up sensitive subjects and asking tough questions in the service of thoughtful reflection and meaningful change. Theatre has the unique power to shine light in dark places. I am proud to say that, after 20 years, we are still living our original mission of shining new light and telling the stories that most need to be told in our city."

For two decades, Actors Bridge has been first to connect local audiences with some of theater's most innovative new plays, including The Vagina Monologues, The Laramie Project, In The Next Room (or the vibrator play), as well as world premieres of locally conceived and crafted works by emerging artists.

In addition, Actors Bridge has led the way with their own examples of innovation, including the devising techniques of Act Like a Grrrl, the cross-training approach of the Sideshow Ensemble and the educational and professional collaboration model with Belmont University's Theatre and Dance Department, as well as the immersive and participatory practices of First Time Stories and oral history-based plays and the experimental events of the Sideshow Fringe Festival.

Taking theatre far out of the proverbial black box, Actors Bridge was first Nashville company to produce site-specific theatre happenings, making use of its urban environs with events like the original adaptation of The Trojan Women (using oral histories from women of Nashville's Kurdish community) as well as Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses and Stephen Adly Guirgis' Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train (all staged in found/immersive spaces), and creating storefront performances in Edgehill village and beyond as part of its audience-approved, critically-lauded Sideshow fringe series.

Jessika Malone, company artistic associate and Nashville native, completes her Master of Fine Arts at Illinois State University and returns to to her hometown to direct two productions this season, directing two productions in the company's 20th season, as well as continuing to lead the annual Sideshow Fringe Festival.

"Growing up in Nashville with aspirations for a life in the theatre, I was asked countless times not 'if' but 'when' I would move away, as though it were impossible to conceive of Nashville having a thriving enough theatrical community to inspire and sustain local talent. There was a consistent perception that if you were 'any good' at your art then you'd go somewhere 'better' in order to 'make it,'" Malone, a 2015 First Night Star Award winner, reminisces. "Vali was the first prominent local theatre maker who caught my attention by completely rejecting the notion that one could be 'too good' for where she came from as she intentionally chose to forego more conventional (perhaps easier) paths to success and invest completely in Nashville, our hometown.

"By choosing to commit to Nashville, she forged entirely new ways of working for all who would follow in this city and continues to create countless opportunities for emerging theatre makers, especially young women. Vali has modeled what it means to be truly of this city and she has not only helped to shape its present success, but plays a huge role in impacting its future as she continues to mentor the next generation of artists through her radically generous approach to cross-training professionals. It is absolutely because of Vali Forrister that I and many of my peers have a life in the city I love making theatre that matters. It will be part of her unique legacy that the answer to the tired question of 'when are you moving to NYC?' can be answered earnestly with 'why would I ever want to leave?'"

Since 1995, Actors Bridge has produced 92 plays, two-thirds of which have been either Nashville premieres or world premieres. Almost 4,000 students have been through the Actors Bridge Training Program, more than 100 young women have been impacted by Act Like a GRRRL and over 500 theater artists were given performance opportunities through the Sideshow Fringe.

According to both Forrister and Malone, the Actors Bridge 20th Anniversary Season celebrates its own legacy with a full season of premieres: three regional premieres and one world premiere, continuing to be the company that will "show you first."

Actors Bridge Ensemble's 2015-16 Season includes:

• HEARTS LIKE FISTS (Nashville premiere) by Adam Szymkowicz. Directed by ABE artistic associate Jessika Malone, and guest director David Ian Lee. It played Belmont's Black Box Theatre September 11 through 20, and featured Britt Byrd, Jess Darnell, Jack E. Chambers, Cassie Hamilton, LaTorious Givens, Brooke Groneymeyer, Kara McLeland, Hayley Rose Maurer, Austin Olive and Parker Arnold. Described as "a superhero noir comedy about the dangers of love. The city's heart beats with fear: Doctor X is sneaking into apartments and injecting lovers with a lethal poison. Lisa's heart beats with hope: Now that she's joined the elite Crimefighters, maybe she can live a life with meaning. And every beat of Peter's wounded heart brings him closer to death, but he's designing an artificial replacement that will never break. Can the Crimefighters stop Doctor X? Do Peter and Lisa have a chance at love? And who is the girl with a face like a plate?"
• THE NETHER (Nashville premiere)by Jennifer Haley. Directed by Jessika Malone in The Darkhorse Chapel (the new studio home of Actors Bridge Ensemble). Runnng December 4 through 13. Tickets are $25 in advance/$30 at the door and include 2 drink tickets. Purchase: www.thenether.eventbrite.com. Curtain is at 7 p.m. This is first first production in the Darkhorse Chapel; ABE is staggering our start time with the production happening in the main theater upstairs. Entrance to the Darkhorse Chapel is on 47th Avenue.Featuring: Rodney Pickel, Phil Perry, Bralyn Stokes, Robin-August Fritsch and Vali Forrister (as Detective Morris). The Nether is a daring examination of moral responsibility in virtual worlds. As Detective Morris, an online investigator, questions Mr. Sims about his activities in a role-playing realm so realistic it could be life, she finds herself on slippery ethical ground. Sims argues for freedom to explore even the most deviant corners of our imagination. Morris holds that we cannot flesh out our malign fantasies without consequence; their clash of wills leads to an outcome neither could have imagined. Suspenseful, ingeniously constructed, and fiercely intelligent, Haley's play forces us to confront deeply disturbing questions about the boundaries of reality. Winner of the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Nether is described as both a serpentine crime drama and haunting sci-fi thriller that explores the consequences of living out our private dreams.
• THE FAIRYTALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS (Nashville premiere) by Meg Miroshnik. A collaboration with Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance Directed by Leah Lowe, Actors Bridge board member and chair of the Theatre Department at Vanderbilt University. Performed in Belmont's Black Box Theatre, April 15-23. Once upon a time-in 2005-a twenty-year-old girl named Annie returned to her native Russia to brush up on the language and lose her American accent. Underneath a glamorous Post-Soviet Moscow studded with dangerously high heels, designer bags, and luxe fur coats, she discovers an enchanted motherland teeming with evil stepmothers, wicked witches, and ravenous bears. Annie must learn how to become the heroine of a story more mysterious and treacherous than any childhood fairy tale: her own. This subversive story haunts the audience, and carries a powerful message for young women living in a world where not everything ends up happily ever after.

• ACT LIKE A GRRRL 2016 (always a world premiere)by the GRRRLS of ALAG. Directed by Vali Forrister in Belmont's Black Box Theatre and presented June 23 and 24. Now in its 12th year, Act Like a GRRRL is an inspiring performance of original stories, dances and songs from the cusp of adulthood performed by the authors themselves: a fearless band of GRRRLS committed to living their best lives and creating a better world.
• THE ICE TREATMENT (world premiere) written and directed by Nate Eppler in Belmont's Black Box Theatre, July 15-24. Eppler's play, which delighted audiences in a recent staged reading courtesy of Nashville Repertory Theatre, The Ice Treatment's synopsis: Left behind on the garbage heap of history and misremembered by everyone (herself included), the world's most infamous Olympic figure skater struggles to reinvent herself as a screenwriter by pitching the blockbuster screenplay of her own amazing life story and her spectacular triumph over stunning adversity. Armed with an old video camera, two actors she hired off craigslist, plastic fashion dolls, and homemade model ice rinks, she sets out to tell the real story. And she isn't going to let the truth get in her way." Originally developed as part of the Nashville Repertory Theatre Ingram New Works Project, this knockout comedy is about what we remember, what really happened, and what we do when we're the only person who believes we're the hero of our own story. Eppler currently serves as Playwright-in-Residence and Director of the Ingram New Works Lab for Nashville Repertory Theatre. His plays include First Night Award-winner for Oustanding Original Work Long Way Down (3Ps Productions), Larries (Nashville Repertory Theatre 2013), Sextape & Other Stories (Playhouse Nashville 2013), and Good Monsters (Nashville Repertory Theatre 2016). Eppler is one of the curators of the Ten Minute Playground and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. For more information visit www.nateeppler.com.
• 6th Annual Sideshow Fringe Festival (multiple world premieres) Jessika Malone, program director, and Mitch Massaro, technical director, in Belmont's Black Box Theatre, The Darkhorse Theatre, and more venues throughout Nashville to be announced, it runsThursday, August 4 through Sunday, August 7, 2016: "Our widely popular annual celebration of outside-the-box offerings will return for its sixth season to delight audiences with a wide array of original and innovative performances over the span of 4 days in multiple venues across our city."

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