Best of Nashville
BEST STAGE DIRECTOR: RENÉ COPELAND
Tennessee Repertory Theatre recently made two important announcements: the company is currently operating in the financial black. And artistic director David Alford is stepping aside for now to pursue his playwriting. That leaves René Copeland in charge of things—and why not? She’s spent the past year directing the company’s plays, which have featured diverse styles and great casts. Copeland scored big with I Hate Hamlet, Intimate Apparel and Speed-the-Plow, and in the process she’s helped revive the company’s reputation for being hip. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST GENRE-EXPLODING LOCAL WRITER: MINTON SPARKS
In a marvelous pastiche of poetry, prose, interview and documentary, Minton Sparks’ first book, Desperate Ransom: Setting Her Family Free, explores the disconnect between actual family history and the way we choose to remember it. Long a phenomenon on the spoken word/performance artist scene, Sparks pulled off a seemingly impossible task this year: transferring her stage show to the page. Anyone who has seen Sparks perform knows how quickly and authentically she can turn from hilarity to heartbreak and back again. Garbed in her grandmother’s dress and accompanied by some of Nashville’s finest musicians, she recounts and acts out her Southern family’s dramas. But Desperate Ransom goes further. Its collage structure indicates a sophisticated artist wrestling with the twin themes of identity and history. As Sparks writes, “Suddenly who I am and what I want are two very different things.” Desperate Ransom enacts that struggle. —PABLO TANGUAY
BEST MISTRESS OF THE COZY: MARY SAUMS
By day, Mary Saums is a mild-mannered postal carrier. By night, she’s firing AK-47’s and dodging bad guys. Well, her alter egos are, anyway. Saums has written some of the funniest cozy mysteries in the genre. Her first series, featuring Willi Taft (Midnight Hour, The Valley of the Jewels and When the Last Magnolia Weeps) showed off Saums’ talent for writing sharp, witty dialogue and knack for placing realistic characters in precarious positions. The first book in her new series, Thistle and Twigg, features two widows in their 60s who know how to make a cup of tea and chase villains. As Saums says, “It’s something like Miss Marple only with assault rifles.” Jane Thistle and Phoebe Twigg are the sort of old ladies most women would like to be one day. And Mary Saums is the sort of writer you should be acquainted with now. —FAYE JONES
BEST ART EXHIBIT FEATURING SELF-MUTILATION: WHISPERING WIND’S “MEMORIES: ME, MOM AND MAO” AT THE FRIST
In 1989, Chinese artist Sheng Qi lopped off the little finger of his left hand in a ghastly act of political protest against the Tiananmen Square massacre. OK, so perhaps Sheng needed to work on his anger management skills. But he nevertheless made the most of his mutilation with “Memories: Me, Mom and Mao,” a photographic triptych that’s on display at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts as part of a Chinese photography exhibit called Whispering Wind. Sheng’s work showed images of his maimed hand holding wallet-size photos of himself as a child, his mother and Mao Zedong. The photo is certainly an eye-catching (or is that eye-averting?) political statement. But on a deeper level, it’s also an effective metaphor for the way totalitarian regimes scar individuals, families and societies. —JOHN PITCHER
BEST ART EXHIBIT FEATURING A SPIKY JESUS: BROTHER MEL AT THE ARTS COMPANY
Every year, this Marianist brother makes an artistic pilgrimage to Nashville to exhibit his works at The Arts Company. Brother Mel (his given name is Melvin Meyer) works in just about every conceivable medium—oil paintings, watercolors, sculptures and metal works. And he seems to prefer abstraction—this monk apparently never met a geometric shape that he didn’t want to paint and hang on a wall. But not surprisingly, his best works all seem to have religious themes. He has created sculptures of the Last Supper in which Christ and his disciples are all fashioned out of railroad spikes. He’s also designed crucifixes out of bits of discarded metal. Brother Mel plans to return to Nashville next year. Since he’ll be turning 80, the monk tells the Scene, “I’ll finally be old enough for a retrospective.” —JOHN PITCHER
BEST ARTS ADMINISTRATOR: MARK WAIT
When the Nashville Symphony Orchestra went looking for a new music director following the death of Kenneth Schermerhorn, it turned to Mark Wait to lead its search. Smart move. As dean of the Blair School of Music, Wait had lots of experience sitting on search committees. He also knew a lot about contemporary classical music, which has always been one of the NSO’s biggest priorities. Wait led his 12-member committee—a mix of NSO musicians, board members and orchestra administrators—for more than two years. He kept everybody focused. Somehow, he also kept everybody quiet—no mean feat given that music types like to gab. Wait was quick to recognize conductor Giancarlo Guerrero’s gifts. And he was able to persuade his committee to give the Costa Rican-born conductor its unanimous support. For that, Nashville music lovers will long be grateful. —JOHN PITCHER
BEST ART EXHIBIT FEATURING PUBIC HAIR: MONICA COOK’S THE PEE GIRLS SERIES AT TAG ART GALLERY
There’s a good reason why Jerry Dale McFadden keeps this series in his back gallery: the dozen images show women in various stages of dropping their panties, showing their bushes and, well, urinating. The works, all mixed media on vellum, are photographically exact. Yet none of them seem foul, crass or pornographic. That’s because Cook’s works focus the eye on women’s faces, not their nether regions. Her subjects all seem to be expressing a liberated, even unmitigated, kind of joy. It’s the look of girls who just want to have fun. And it’s the kind of adventurous, high-quality art that people have come to expect from this terrific art gallery. —JOHN PITCHER
BEST USE OF THEATER AS A REMINDER OF NASHVILLE’S SOCIAL HISTORY: ORDINARY HEROES
This joint production of Amun Ra Theatre and Actors Bridge Ensemble lacked some cohesion on stage. All the same, the standing ovations it received from audiences at Fisk Memorial Chapel can’t be ignored. The play used sketches, multimedia devices and serious narration to tell the story of Nashville during the civil-rights struggle of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. The play served both as welcome history lesson and as a strong reminder of just how far we’ve come. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST REASON TO WRITE A BLOODY BOOK: KILLER NASHVILLE
Short of being anointed by Oprah, one of the few ways to make a living as a novelist—not to be confused with making a living as a university creative-writing teacher—is to turn out a good thriller every year or so. Killer Nashville is an annual conference that brings together successful writers, editors, agents and criminologists to teach aspiring writers how it’s done and to help actual writers make more money. With featured speakers such as Michael Connelly and Mary Higgins Clark, the conference attracts writers from all over the country, and this is only its second year. Stay tuned for a whole raft of new books featuring murder at the Bluebird, mayhem at Opry Mills and a bloodbath in Printer’s Alley. —MARGARET RENKL
BEST ART SCANDAL NOT INVOLVING THE STIEGLITZ COLLECTION: CINDY REHM AT TENNESSEE ARTS COMMISSION
Cindy Rehm’s videos may not be worth millions. And they may not be the subject of an ongoing, dysfunctional family-style custody battle. Yet Rehm found herself in the middle of a controversy last May, when the Tennessee Arts Commission refused to show some of her videos. A Murfreesboro artist, Rehm was invited to show her work after she won TAC’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Media Award. But one of her videos reportedly depicted partially clad women using their bodies to pass fruit back and forth. Rich Boyd, TAC’s executive director, conceded there was some nudity in the video. But he insisted his agency refused to show it because of a “lack of artistic value,” not the nudity. Hey, we’d like to be the judge of that. —JOHN PITCHER
BEST ACTOR: JESSEJAMES LOCORRIERE
After a stint away from Nashville, this actor recently returned to the city and quickly reestablished himself as an important talent. He gave an outstanding performance in People’s Branch Theatre’s Rhinoceros and was also fantastic in Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s Speed-the-Plow, in which he played a slick, foul-mouthed, opportunistic Hollywood producer. His scenes in that play with co-star David Alford were nothing less than riveting. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST ACTRESS: LAURA MARSH
Laura Marsh has been making a lot of noise lately. After appearing in mostly minor roles at Boiler Room Theatre and Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre, Marsh suddenly emerged as a serious player in GroundWorks Theatre’s affecting production of Closer. Next, she tried her hand at light comedy, playing the lead in BRT’s Miss Firecracker Contest, and then portrayed the urchin-girl Little Sally in BRT’s satirical musical Urinetown. That’s a lot of versatility to showcase in less than a year. The kid’s got talent.—MARTIN BRADY
BEST COMIC LOOK AT A TENNESSEE BORDELLO: PAULA WALL’S THE WILDE WOMEN
Paula Wall is a harebrained trickster (the Br’er Rabbit kind) who lives way out in the Williamson County hills. She used to be a syndicated humor columnist—“Off the Wall” boasted 8 million readers a week before she retired the column—but she blossomed into a full-blown novelist two years ago with her first book, The Rock Orchard. In her latest tale, The Wilde Women, Wall invents a Depression-era Tennessee hamlet where the biggest things in town are the shirt factory and the local illegal distillery. That is, until Pearl Wilde comes to town and opens a bordello. All the usual town characters show up for the fun, along with some highly unusual ones. Wall reads Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. in Austin Peay’s Gentry Auditorium. —WAYNE CHRISTESON
BEST NOT-YET-IN-MUSIC-CITY MUSIC MEMOIR: BOBBY BRADDOCK
If you work in country music, you might consider sending Bobby Braddock a gift basket. Praise his work. Perhaps bestow a large sum of money on him. This year, he published his first memoir, Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter’s Youth in Old Florida. It focuses on his childhood memories of a time and place now Disneyfied. Now, the longtime hitmaker (his tunes include “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today”) is working on a new book about Nashville. After several decades in the music business, he’s got the material, and the man understands the worth, and effect, of a good descriptive detail. (Take another look at his songs.) All the egos he’s encountered through the years should prepare themselves. Braddock tells the truth: warts, heartaches and all. —LACEY GALBRAITH
BEST PUBLIC ART CONTROVERSY: “GHOST BALLET FOR THE EAST BANK MACHINEWORKS”
To Alice Aycock’s great credit, she has succedded in stirring up local aesthetic outrage without including a single exposed breast or penis. Her “Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks” looks like a giant rollercoaster. But does it detract from the downtown streetscape? Not when you consider that its neighbors are Tootsie’s and the BellSouth “Batman” Building. All the same, her sculpture apparently ran afoul of expectations that public art should be dignified, not giddy. As people get used to the piece, though, they may notice it’s remarkably versatile, visible from many places in the city. —DAVID MADDOX
BEST OUTDOOR INSTALLATION: CHRIS DRURY’S “STAR CHAMBER” AT DYER OBSERVATORY
There are few better ways to spend an October day than to head up to Vanderbilt’s Dyer Observatory and check out the “Star Chamber,” an outdoor installation by British artist Chris Drury. Halfway between sculpture and science project, the structure, made from about 150 tons of native limestone, acts as a camera obscura—it’s a giant pinhole camera. After you enter the half-dome, your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, and then presto!—you start to see images of trees and clouds projected through a tiny hole in the roof and onto the interior walls. According to the artist and the folks at Dyer, the effect is most pronounced during mid-morning and mid-afternoon on a partly cloudy day. And the view from Dyer—which sits on a high hill overlooking the southern reaches of Nashville—is spectacular, particularly during the peak of autumn. —JACK SILVERMAN
BEST FLEETING ART EXPERIENCE: SOOPLEX GALLERY
It was like a summer fling. SooPlex Gallery came to town, showed us a good time and then quickly left for other pursuits. Gallery proprietors Michael Calway-Fagan and Julian Rogers usually presented the works of kindred spirits—artists who were young, sophisticated and interested in creating thought-provoking art. Consider their first show. It focused on a single Joshua Wolcott sculpture, which looked like an old-time gramophone speaker fashioned from wire mesh. The piece was fitted with a helmet and wheels, so in addition to looking at it you could also wear it or move it around. So was it visual art? Performance art? You got to be the judge. After a string of similarly thoughtful shows, Calway-Fagan moved to Athens, Ga., where he plans to open another gallery space. Rogers, meanwhile, moved to Brooklyn, the center of the American art world. The two of them say they’ll stay in touch with Nashville. Seems like there was a time or two when many of us said the same thing. —DAVID MADDOX
BEST VICTORIAN VENTRILOQUIST: TASHA ALEXANDER
Dashing gentlemen and high-spirited ladies, 19th century aristocrats at high-society balls, grand country estates and posh London homes: these are the hallmarks of a Tasha Alexander novel. Add a heroine who doesn’t let corsets and Victorian views of women get in the way of solving a few murders, and you have a few of the reasons her fans are so devoted. Alexander’s latest—and her second book to hit shelves this year—is Elizabeth: The Golden Age, an adaptation of the forthcoming Cate Blanchett film. Not bad for a stay-at-home mom who didn’t start writing until five years ago. Smart, funny and lovely, the stories Alexander crafts are almost as intriguing as the one she lives. —LACEY GALBRAITH
BEST SCHOOL LIBRARIAN TO RETIRE AND HIT THE BESTSELLER LIST: BRENDA RICKMAN VANTREASE
No one seems to have told Brenda Rickman Vantrease that second acts aren’t normal. For the first 25 years of her career, Vantrease was a teacher and librarian for Metro schools. After she retired at 47, she began writing. Two bestsellers followed, along with critical adoration. Both novels—2005’s The Illuminator and this year’s The Mercy Seller—are set in 14th and 15th century Europe. This genre has suffered from light matter and heavy romance—the term “bodice-ripping” comes to mind—but Vantrease raises the bar considerably, layering religion, politics, intrigue and power into her stories. (All those years spent reading and shelving books apparently paid dividends.) Plus she doesn’t toss out all of the aforementioned romance. Hey, who said librarians are boring? —LACEY GALBRAITH
BEST POEM ABOUT ANONYMOUS AIRPORT SEX: “A DEFINITION OF TERMS”
If you ever wanted proof that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” compare the men’s room misadventures of Idaho’s Sen. Larry Craig with the anonymous liaison described in Nashvillian Blas Falconer’s poem “A Definition of Terms.” The shame-filled Craig tortures himself—and us—with his hypocrisy, denying himself any hint of joy in the desire that has apparently cost him his career. By contrast, the openly gay Falconer, an assistant professor of English at APSU, turns the crude language of the pick-up into an ode to tender pleasure found in, yes, an airport toilet:
...The sex
was great: a bathroom stall, a soft love-
grip, buckles, buttons, good-bye kiss, all too
fast to forget, tender to confuse. 1. To cruise:
to seek comfort in a body. 2. Trick: The cruised,
the lonely, the starved; sex between strangers
who give and take this temporary love.
The poem is included in Falconer’s first book-length collection, A Question of Gravity and Light (The University of Arizona Press), published earlier this year. Maybe somebody should send Larry Craig a copy. —MARIA BROWNING
BEST THEATRICAL SPECTACLE: THE LION KING
This Disneyfied extravaganza finally made its way to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, and the thousands who came to see it were treated to contemporary theater at its technical best. The production featured gorgeous lighting, glorious set pieces, catchy Elton John songs and special effects that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The talented cast of singers, dancers and puppeteers brought the jungle story to life, and in the process they restored our collective faith in musical theater. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST ART WORLD SOAP OPERA: FISK UNIVERSITY’S STIEGLITZ COLLECTION
Yet again, the saga of Fisk University’s Stieglitz Collection keeps us wringing our hands. For much of the past year, Fisk and the Santa Fe-based Georgia O’Keeffe Museum have been wrangling in court over the university’s right to sell off part of its valuable art collection. Fisk wanted to sell its most valuable painting, Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Radiator Building—Night, New York,” at a deep discount to shore up its shaky finances. The museum, however, argued that Fisk was prohibited from selling off its collection piecemeal—unless, of course, Fisk was willing to sell its most valuable painting to the museum at a fire-sale price. Now comes Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. Ever on the lookout for bargains, Walton and Crystal Bridges have been buying up art around the country. They annoyed New Yorkers when they bought a classic Asher Durand painting from the New York City Public Library. Now they’re offering Fisk $30 million for a 50-percent share in the Stieglitz Collection. Not surprisingly, the O’Keeffe Museum has said it may try to block the sale. So count on this soap opera to continue. —DAVID MADDOX
BEST SET DESIGNER: GARY HOFF
Hoff creates sets on which the actors of Tennessee Repertory Theater gladly perform. His set for I Hate Hamlet was an elaborate two-story recreation of a sumptuous, ornately detailed Upper East Side New York City apartment. It was a glorious set that probably reminded many Shakespeare fans of the Globe Theatre. It was certainly captured the spirit of this play’s Shakespearean theme. Hoff may be oft-acclaimed, but he keeps providing good reasons for that. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST PUPPET THEATER: WISHING CHAIR PRODUCTIONS
Brian Hull is one of Nashville’s creative treasures. His production company has a small staff, but somehow they manage to produce engaging puppet shows at the Nashville Public Library on a regular basis. Every year, as many as 15,000 youngsters experience Wishing Chair shows, which feature imaginative puppets, colorful set designs and appealing stories. The company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is as charming as it comes, suitable for all ages, and continues through Oct. 20. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST FINE ARTS APPLIANCE: GENE SIMMONS JUICER AT TWIST GALLERY
John Watts creates art works that look like elaborate toys. One of his pieces featured multicultural godlike figures going at it in a miniature wrestling ring. Another, a zeppelin with a futuristic crew (the figures looked like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie). Watts’ most memorable work, however, is a sculpture of Gene Simmons, which, with its teased hair and extended tongue, was a nice tribute to the rock icon. But it’s also a functioning juicer. You can squeeze fruit inside the sculpture’s head, and juice will roll down the tongue. Watts calls the piece “Prune Juicer,” an apt reference for rock relics who somehow keep going well into middle age. —DAVID MADDOX
BEST ARTISTIC TREATMENT OF EXTREME RELIGION: GARY MONROE’S SNAKE HANDLERS AT ESTEL GALLERY
At first glance, Gary Monroe’s paintings and drawings might look like Baroque-era religious works (his subjects wear flowing clothes and are attended by angels and saints). But then you realize his figures are carrying snakes. They’re Appalachian snake handlers, the X-gamers of American religion, and they are the focus of works that are otherwise modeled after such Baroque masters as Titian, Caravaggio and Bronzino. Monroe’s works are an ingenious juxtaposition of high and low culture, and in that respect they have something to say about the nature of religious passion. In fact, that kind of faith seems to thrive in the simplest of social environments, and it’s always been that way. Visions of Mary came to humble village girls at Lourdes. As we become more urban and urbane, it may be harder to achieve such genuine ecstasy. We city slickers tend to look down on the people who still have experiences like those of classic saints. —DAVID MADDOX
BEST CLASSICAL PRODUCTION: ODYSSEUS
Vanderbilt University Theatre and director Jon Hallquist staged an excellent piece of classical theater with this excerpt from John Barton’s Tantalus cycle, a retelling of events covered in Euripides’ Trojan Women. A starkly cool set approximated a war-torn landscape, and the student performances, especially Brielle Bryan’s, were literate and seriously poised. —MARTIN BRADY
BEST PERFORMANCE AS A CHIROPTERAN HUMANOID: JEFFREY WILLIAMS
It was weird and wacky—based on a noted piece of tabloid science fiction—but Street Theatre Company’s production of the musical Bat Boy was a welcome local premiere. It had a generally strong cast, but as the half-bat, half-human titular figure, Williams made it all work. Sure, he sported Spock-like ears, groveled pathetically in a cage, and later emerged as a beloved family member and townsperson whose alien lineage eventually got the best of him. But who knew bats could sing that well? —MARTIN BRADY
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