Celebrating Christmas Onstage: What's Your Favorite Show?

There's the scent of evergreens in the air, garlands of magnolia leaves festooning the entryways of porches all over the south and the rustle of tulle and organdy heralding annual productions of The Nutcracker...it's the holiday season! And while retailers have decorated their windows within an inch of their lives, theater companies have been holding up their end of the bargain, with multiple productions of It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and White Christmas beckoning audiences into darkened auditoriums everywhere.

In the Nashville area, there are at least four versions of It's A Wonderful Life playing this season, including the Studio Tenn production in Jamison Hall at the Factory in Franklin, Springhouse Theatre Company's rendition in Smyrna, Actors Point Theatre Company hosts their own production in Hendersonville and Pull-Tight Players welcomes audiences to their show in downtown Franklin. A Christmas Carol, the Musical, continues through this weekend at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, while the Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre's original adaptation of A Christmas Carol-this one updated by Lydia Bushfield-plays through New Year's Eve.

Nashville Rep's traditional holiday season offering of A Christmas Story, based on the beloved, iconic film about young Ralphie (played by the winningly charming Samuel Whited) and his quest for a Red Ryder bb gun, continues at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Hall through December 21.

A Tuna Christmas opens this week Backstage at the Barn, running through December 31. In Dickson, The Renaissance Players celebrates the season with Irving Berlin's White Christmas (also running through this weekend) while downstairs at The Renaissance Center at Freed-Hardeman University, the Gaslight Dinner Theatre presents the four-person Two Guys and a Christmas Tree.

Nashville Ballet's beautifully designed and rapturously danced Nutcracker opened Saturday, December 6, providing an appropriate Christmastime diversion guaranteed to inspire dreams of sugarplums and dancing mice. And Opryland Hotel has thrown the switch on for its annual Christmastime celebration and the thousands of twinkling white house that adorn virtually everything that stands on the resort's extensive campus.

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...

Chambers Stevens: I like big cheesy Pigeon Forge Christmas reviews. Like A Country Christmas. In fact we are spending Christmas in East Tennessee. And we already have our tickets. Can't get something like that in LA.

LaQuita James: I like A Christmas Carol because it is traditional with an excellent moral to the story. Plus the costumes are great

Howard Snyder: Rent- because love brings light to darkness... in any season!

Michael Edwards: The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge-original from Orlando Shakespeare several years back, touching, funny and quirky, and of course A Tuna Christmas, for personal reasons.

Jacki Moss: A Tuna Christmas, an irreverent bright spot.

Linda Speir: It's A Wonderful Life

Lane Wright: Mark Cabus' one-man A Christmas Carol.

Wayne Gurley: Back in the mid-1980s, I produced The Homecoming by Earl Hamner Jr., the precursor to The Waltons TV series, in the Belle Mead Mansion Carriage House. It truly was a magical experience. The story focuses on the hopes and dreams of a struggling family during one Depression-Era Christmas Eve as they eagerly await the arrival of the patriarch of the family, who's been delayed by a snowstorm. It's a warm and wonderful classic filled with nostalgia, laughter and tears.

Vickie Bailey: I also love A Tuna Christmas, one of the craziest fun productions I ever did.

Angela Fox: David Alford's one-man staging (accompanied by a musician on guitar) of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory is excellent. When he presented it one night at his late father's church (where my family attends) in Adams, Tennessee. It was truly special.

Daniel Sadler: Top of Form

SantaLand Diaries! A hilarious peek into the mind of the holiday elf.

Daniel Luther: Capote's A Christmas Memory. It encompasses all the complex, quirky, painful, insanely joyful quality of Christmas in the South, which is all I have ever known. Except I make plum pudding, not fruitcake.

Joy Tilley Perryman: I have always loved Peter Pan at Christmas and watching which little ones are not interested in clapping to keep Tink alive.

Joshua Waldrep: Rent. Nothing makes me think of Christmas more than AZT, rice and beans and cheese, dildos, ODing, and "candy bar wrappers"/smack. Christmas Bells are ring...somewhere else...not here. La Vie Boheme forever.

Maria Garner: The Nutcracker.

Elle Overby: I always want to watch Meet Me in St. Louis, the movie. I love the feeling of joy and happiness it brings me and two of my all-time favorite songs are from that movie. I've never seen it on stage, but to me the movie is a classic.

Alice Raver: Santaland Diaries. I love it.

Jonathan Pinkerton: White Christmas...when done right.

Delores McCreery: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Dan Hayes: Santaland Diaries. I want to see Elf and A Christmas Story. From TV, I enjoy Mrs. Santa Claus with Angela Lansbury.

Eric Ventress: Mark Cabus' one-man A Christmas Carol. That's my yearly holiday theater tradition, and I love it. (Granted, that tradition started because I was paid to do it, but now I just go see it out of the kindness of my heartplace, so I'm not BS-ing you with my answer).

Kary Moreland Choate: The Nutcracker. Always a dancer at heart, plus a dance mom.

Linda Sue Runyeon Hard for me to answer. Mark Cabus' Christmas Carol is my all-time fave, but I also love The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, A Christmas Memory and The Homecoming. I am looking forward to seeing It's A Wonderful Life.

Jessica Carter: I like all the different live versions of A Christmas Carol I've seen over the years. I never get tired of the story, costumes, and watching Ebenezer morph into a caring man. Gives me warm Christmas fuzzies.

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