Scot Copeland Always Had a Story to Tell

In September, 2010, Scot Copeland - who joined Nashville Children's Theatre as producing artistic director in 1985 - did an interview ahead of his induction among the very first Class of First Night Honorees and we are happy to share some "Scot stories," straight from the horse's mouth as it were, as part of our continued remembrance of the vital role he has filled in our theater community for more than 30 years and in honor of his abiding friendship and astounding imaginative leadership of our creative community.

Last week, the beloved and inspiring Copeland passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 62 years old and he is survived by his wife, Rene Dunshee Copeland (producing artistic director at Nashville Repertory Theatre) and their two sons, Ben and Josh Copeland. As always, both Scot and Rene were hard at work on new theater projects: He died the night before NCT's latest show (Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott) opened, directed by the acclaimed Jon Royal and featuring a cast that includes Tamiko Robinson Steele, James Rudolph, Rashad Rayford, Bobby Wyckoff, Lauren Frances Jones, Latrisha Talley and Denice Hicks (which was preceded by Scot's last directorial effort with his own interpretation of Cinderella), and Rene had just started rehearsals for her next musical, the iconic and award-winning Chicago, which opens March 19, starring Martha Wilkinson, Geoff Davin, Corrie Maxell and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, among others.

An integral part of Nashville's First Night tradition since 1990 (when Copeland offered to host subsequent First Night presentation at NCT), Scot was the first honoree to be designated when the celebration of theater and the people who create onstage magic was revived as The First Night Honors.

From 2010: Scot Copeland always has a story to tell: "My paternal ancestors came to south central Tennessee with a land grant for Revolutionary War service, and were farmers, Primitive Baptist preachers and whiskey makers (that was once a Copeland Brothers distillery in Flintville that mysteriously burned to the ground after the visit of a fire-breathing, teetotaling evangelical revival). My maternal ancestors were railroad men, volunteer firemen and Democratic machine ward bosses here in Nashville (my grandparents met while working for Nashville's first telephone exchange in the building that is now Marche restaurant)." Now celebrating his silver anniversary at Nashville Children's Theatre, he is the producing artistic director of that company, considered by many one of the finest theatrical endeavors devoted to younger audiences in the United States.

Where did you go to school? I went to undergraduate school at the University of Montevallo; it had been a women's college until just a few years before I started, so they had no football team and female to male ratio of 3:1. They also had a theatre department with great teachers who did far more than they should have for a school that size, so there were lots of opportunities to get onstage. Homecoming was built around competitive original musical theatre. What had started as a skit night a hundred years or so before had evolved into something enormous and quite unique.

In their first semester, freshmen were expected to declare themselves either Gold or Purple, and each team produced an original piece of musical theatre - with a budget, an enormous cast, a full orchestra - that rain in competition for three nights. On the third night, they were judged and the winners had bragging rights for a year. Before one's show started, there were cheerleaders onstage cheering the cast on to victory. It was actually all rather primal, and much like the descriptions of the ancient Greek theater festivals of Dionysius. I am only one of three fellow Purples during my time who went on to become artistic directors of professional theaters, and there would have been a fourth had the best of us not been killed in a car accident on graduation day. That is an amazing statistic, and theater schools should take not.

Another of those three - a gorgeous, witty girl with amazing breasts named Rene Dunshee Copeland (the girls, not the breasts), is now the producing artistic director of [Nashville] Repertory Theatre, and she married me shortly after graduation and we've been married ever since. We moved to the Washington, D.C. area, running a small touring children's theater in the day and working in the country's first Ticketron theater box office at night. I also did some jobbed-in acting and teaching for the Roundhouse Theatre. After three years of that we went to the University of North Carolina-Greensboro for our graduate degrees. [2013 First Night Honoree] Jim Crabtree brought me back to my home state, where I was Cumberland County Playhouse's first education director.

When did you decide you wanted to pursue a career in the performing arts? I saw a Birmingham Children's Theatre production of The Wind in the Willows in Boaz, Alabama, and decided about 15 minutes into the show that this is what I would do. So, I founded a children's theater wing of the theater and produced and directed Winnie The Pooh. The Whole Backstage Community Theatre - and its children's theatre wing - still exist today, in a million-dollar facility they added on to an old school building deeded to them.

What was your first foray onto the theater scene in Nashville? 1985: my first production at NCT: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Why do you pursue your art in Nashville? In the summer of 1985, with our first child only weeks old, we moved to Nashville, where (hand-picked and championed by the remarkable [First Night Lifetime Achievement Award winner] Ann Stahlman Hill) I had been hired to take over the leadership of the then-troubled Nashville Children's Theatre. Now, this is what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to do it, but I think my first thoughts that I might be here long-term came when, shortly after taking the position, I was studying the decades of stored records that now reside at the Children's Theater Archives at Arizona State University, I found out where Miss Taylor at Charlie Bagley Elementary in Fayetteville, Tennessee, got the techniques she used back in the summer of 1961, when she took two weeks of her summer vacation to enroll in NCT's teacher workshops with Winifred Ward and Rita Christie.

If you could act in/direct/produce/design any work, what would it be? Play "Big Daddy" in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

What is your favorite play? Tartuffe. Wicked in every way.

What is your favorite musical? The Fantasticks. Perfect score, lean and rich theatrically.

-- photo of Scot Copeland by Rick Malkin

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