Maryanna Clarke

In the aftermath of experiencing the Nashville premiere of Jagged Little Pill — the musical inspired by and featuring music from Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album of the same name, other songs written by her and including two created expressly for the production, and featuring a compelling, biting and challenging book by Diablo Cody — one cannot help but lament the show’s abbreviated three-performance run at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall.

A town in the middle of nowhere, a violent relationship, a heinous crime, a tell-all letter. Wyoming, 1888. The gold rush came and went in the American state, leaving marks only in the popularity of Belle, the star of the Mermaid brothel. It’s “A story about tyrants and those who survive them” tells one of the five prostitutes who’s going to catch us up with the facts.

The Show Must Go Online today announced the full cast for their upcoming livestreamed readings of William Shakespeare's Richard II, and a special performance of scenes from Ian Doescher's Much Ado About Mean Girls, presented by Quirk Books as part of their Pop Shakespeare Events.

It's that time of the week, theater lovers! With the weekend set to kick off at any moment - personally, we like to consider Thursday morning at 12:01 a.m. the official start of the weekend (that's directed primarily to the Dowager Countess of Grantham who quite clearly didn't understand what actually constitutes a 'weekend') - so we are back with a few suggestions of our own to help make your job easier. There are some new shows opening, others which are continuing their runs and still more which will be winding up their slate of performances this weekend!

It's another busy weekend in Nashville - but when is Music City not packed with events, festivals, affairs? - and we're back with our Critic's Choice recommendations to have you cut through the theatrical flotsam and jetsam and find a cultural opening that's a good fit for your harried lifestyle. Nashville Opera opens its staging of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock at Noah Liff Opera Center, Way Off Broadway Productions unveils its version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Music Valley Event Center, Street Theatre Company invites you to the see their staging of Lynn Nottage's Sweat at their new venue on Elm Hill Pike and Nashville Rep continues its celebration of 10 years of The Ingram New Works Festival at Nashville Children's Theatre.

Directed with grace and wit by Tennessee Women's Theater Project founder Maryanna Clarke, Sistas the Musical is now onstage through May 19 at The Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, located conveniently just off Rosa Parks Boulevard in north Nashville, a historically black enclave that has been central to the civil rights struggles of the citizens of Tennessee's capital city.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project presents the revival of the most popular show in company history when SISTAS the Musical opens at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre for a May 3-19 run.

By turns wonderfully funny and achingly poignant, Every Brilliant Thing - Tennessee Women's Theater Project's mounting of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahue's one-actor play about dealing with the suicide of one's mother - offers Nashville audiences a unique method by which to examine the effects of depression and surviving the loss of a loved one. Starring notable local actor Becky Wahlstrom, what ensues is not quite a monologue, nor is it (for all intents and purposes) a one-woman show (or what one expects from such an offering) due to its clever and imaginative structure that ensures every audience member becomes intimately involved in what transpires in a scant one-hour of stage time.

Tamiko Robinson Steele's bravura performance as Mary, the heroine of Ginna Hoben's delightful The Twelve Dates Of Christmas, is reason enough to spend an hour and a half in a darkened theater amid all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Now onstage in the fourth annual Tennessee Women's Theater Project production of Hoben's sharply written and wonderfully entertaining one-woman show, Steele brings her own sense of whimsy and fun to the role that Rebekah Durham so memorably portrayed from 2015-2017 for TWTP.

With recent events related to the #metoo movement within the dance world, notably at New York City Ballet (NYCB), the voice of women in a setting such as this felt sacred. Among art forms, dance is the ultimate challenge to the agency of the female body, which is often at the direction and control of male directors, choreographers, and partners.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project launches its eleventh season at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater with the regional premiere of a play that addresses a timely dilemma: Nikkole Salter's Lines in the Dust, which probes the timely topics of integration, racial privilege and school zoning manipulation. Lines in the Dust runs October 6-22.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project launches its eleventh season at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater with the regional premiere of a play that addresses a timely dilemma: Nikkole Salter's Lines in the Dust, which probes the timely topics of integration, racial privilege and school zoning manipulation. Lines in the Dust runs October 6-22.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI: Welcome to Friday, June 2, 2017! The weekend is upon us (thank you, very much) and we cannot conceive of a better way to live life dramatically than by catching a first night performance of a show? It's opening night for several new shows and we send out warm wishes of "break a leg"...

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! Down in the right-hand corner of my computer screen, it tells me that its Friday, May 19 - which means that Memorial Day Weekend is just a week away! - how in the world did we make it from New Year's Day to Memorial Day in what seems to me to be like 15 minutes? When you figure that out, please give me a heads-up so I can better prepare for Christmas shopping! And that, of course, has me wondering what shows we'll be seeing during the next holiday season which, in turn, prompts me to ask the musical question: What's your favorite Christmas or holiday-themed stage offering?

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's Friday, May 5, 2017! The sound of muffled sniffles, pats on the back and mortarboards being thrown into the air will be reverberating throughout Nashville this weekend as commencement ceremonies get under way at Belmont University, Tennessee State University, David Lipscomb University and Trevecca Nazarene University and thousands of newly minted graduates will begin to live life dramatically! Next week, we get to do it all over again as Vanderbilt University unleashes their grads upon society, so keep your eyes peeled for celebrating coeds and their hopeful/mournful parents!

Tennessee Women's Theater Project returns to Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater starting Friday, May 5, with the Eleventh Annual Women's Work Festival of performing and visual arts created by women.

First Night's Top Ten of 2017 - critic Jeffrey Ellis' annual review of the best in Tennessee theater - were revealed tonight during a live Facebook broadcast at 7:30 p.m. (CST), with Actor's Bridge Ensemble and Studio Tenn/TPAC leading the nods in this year's listing of categories.

Here are our suggestions - our choices, as it were - for the shows to catch, the people to see, before Monday morning rolls around. Again. When work beckons, we promise you'll have so much more interesting water cooler chatter to share that you'll be the envy of everyone at the office: