Jennifer Richmond

Nashville Children's Theatre, the nation's oldest professional theatre for young audiences today announces full casting and creative teams for the 2017-2018 season, opening the theater's 87th season - its first with programming designed by new executive artistic director Ernie Nolan.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's Wednesday, June 7, 2017! Kathie Lee and Hoda are in town today to show their Today show audience what's happening in Nashville, which prompts the musical question: What's sights are on your list of places to go when newbies turn to you for advice? Let us know and we'll feature you in an upcoming story!

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's Thursday, June 1, 2017 - or, as we like to call it #TheaterThursday, 'June is busting out all over…' as a song from Carousel reminds us, and there's no better way to kick off a new month than by planning our theater outings for the weekend! Tomorrow night at Cumberland County Playhouse, the company, cast and crew unveil the 2017 model of Smoke on the Mountain, which marks the 24th year of the musical playing in Crossville. Weslie Webster directs and her cast includes Daniel W. Black and Lauren Marshall as Sanders family father and mother Burl and Vera.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - and we hope you've sufficiently recovered from Memorial Day Weekend so that you're able to face the rest of the week with the necessary intent to achieve all that's possible in a world where white pants and white shoes are acceptable (it's summer, after all…well, unofficially, from a social standpoint)! All of this prompts us to ask the musical question: What did you do this holiday weekend? Social media was fairly abuzz with all manner of outings and adventures perpetrated by the theaterati, including both Amy Prough Stumpfl and Nancy Allen attending a performance of Hamilton in Chicago, where Belmont University Musical Theatre alumni Candace Quarrels and Chris Lee are starring!

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! Welcome to the start of Memorial Day Weekend: It's Friday, May 26, 2017 and time to live life dramatically! It really sounds like we should be cutting a ribbon somewhere to herald the start of the long weekend that kicks off summer, but instead we sit here in front of a computer screen, remembering and reminiscing, in hopes of providing you with something to read while you sit by the pool, waiting for the SPF37 to kick in!

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's a glorious new day - #TheatreThursday, in fact - there's a bright golden haze on the meadow and today we're posing this question: What's your favorite stage comedy? And why does it tickle your funny bone (and we don't mean that in a dirty way, so get your freakin' minds outta the gutter!)? Greetings to our two cover models: the always entertaining and intriguing Daron Bruce and Jennifer Richmond, all dressed up in their Easter finery to get their daily dose of theater chatter!

Strong performances from a quartet of Nashville actors and capable writing and direction by Jeff Swafford should be enough to create a compelling and engaging stage play. Unfortunately, those elements don't add up to what we'd hoped for in Woodland Entertainment's production of Crazy All These Years, onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre through next weekend.

Opening tonight at Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater is multi-hyphenate Jeff Swafford's (he's a playwright-producer-filmmaker-director, among other things) play Crazy All These Years, which stars a cast of Nashville's best-known actors, including Jennifer Richmond, Michael Adock, Cinda McCain and Daniel Hackman.

Spring is here! Why doesn't my heart go dancing? Well, Mr. Lorenz Hart, personally, we are too damn busy with creating the magic of live theater: We're directing a show (Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will? opens next week - April 20 - at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, thank you very much) and trying to make it out to see as much theater in Nashville as possible before old age takes its toll - it's tough out there for a theater critic!

Originally shot as a film featuring local actress Cinda McCain, Crazy All These Years is a poignant yet humorous look at life, death and the damage caused by running away from the past. This new drama, described as 'quiet and compelling,' focuses on Ben, a gay man who returns to his small Tennessee hometown to care for his cantankerous dying mother. As they struggle to understand one another, Ben must also examine his previous relationships and the broken hearts left in his wake.

Writer/producer/director Jeff Swafford debuts Crazy All These Years, the stage version of his screenplay which he made into a film last year, at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre next week for an April 13-22 run. Starring Cinda McCain, Michael Adcock, Jennifer Richmond and Daniel Hackman, Swafford's play is one of Spring 2017's most eagerly anticipated productions.

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.

It's another one of those perplexing and invigorating weekends in Nashville theater as some of the season's most anticipated shows open - and theater-goers find themselves sometimes making a "Sophie's Choice" decision in some cases when the options somehow seem overwhelming. And as confounding as that can be for audiences, it once again shows that the theater scene in these parts remains as vital and as artistically challenging as ever…

Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

You can be certain that during this time of year, I'm making my way to various and sundry theaters to witness the latest Christmaslike offerings from companies large and small, but after last season's A Country Christmas, Carol - playwright/actress Lydia Bushfield's uniquely fun take on the Charles Dickens classic about the coldly restrained Ebenezer Scrooge and that whiny little cuss Tiny Tim - her newest show, now onstage at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, seemed mighty promising to kick off my season with raucous laughter and bemused sentiment.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.