Curious Music City theater folk spent 24 hours on tenterhooks upon learning of a press conference called by Tennessee Repertory Theatre for 6 p.m. Wednesday, to be held at Emma Bistro Café downtown near the river on the east side of Hermitage Avenue. The big news? Like so many things nowadays, it was all about branding. The Rep will henceforth be known as Nashville Repertory Theatre (NRT), a name change that “celebrates the theater’s deep commitment … to fostering the city’s theater ecology.”
NRT board members, executives, donors, staff and a bevy of local artists, media, press and affiliated theater supporters were in attendance last night as the cast of The Rep’s upcoming production of Sweeney Todd sang a number from the show, and various dignitaries addressed the audience on the whys and wherefores of the new name and logo.
Among the speakers were Vicki Horne, Rep board president; René D. Copeland, producing artistic director; Paula Roberts, board president of the Metro Nashville Arts Commission; Megan Barry, Metro City Council member-at-large; and also Martha Ingram, co-founder of The Rep and for decades the city’s leading individual patron of the arts.
“Besides serving Nashville audiences, we have evolved to become a company of Nashville theater artists,” said Copeland, elaborating on the name change. “We have come to embrace the idea that’s it’s part of our job to help drive Nashville’s ‘theater engine.’ We even state explicitly in our strategic plan that we exist not only to provide great theater to this city, but also to provide a home that enables professional theater artists to live here.
“We’re Nashvillians, and we thrive on the idea that we are in service to this town.
“In thinking forward to our future we came to this strong conviction that the time had come for us to focus clearly and strongly on communicating who we are locally, regionally and nationally.”
In conversation later, Copeland noted that the growing national reputation of The Rep’s annual Ingram New Works playwriting project has further affirmed the company’s artistic identity as more strongly “Nashville” than “Tennessee.”
That’s just one more logical reason for this new development, Copeland said. And who can argue? The city's national profile has never been higher.
Councilwoman Barry capped off the formalities by reading an enthusiastic and supportive letter from Mayor Karl Dean, who congratulated the company on “embracing your true identity.”
