On any given weekend this fall, theater-goers will be able to choose between at least three local theater productions. Even better, those choices have increased in quality as well as in number. Nashville now boasts four professional theaters as well as five firmly established community theaters. Rather than bemoaning the competition, the creative forces behind local acting companies hope the theater scene in Nashville has achieved enough critical mass to attract a larger audience.
The difference between professional and community isn’t always clear at the box office or, frankly, onstage. Essentially, the distinction between the two is that professional theaters pay the actors, directors and stage crew for their work, while volunteers—who may or may not be professionals—supply the talent required to stage a community production.
Not coincidentally, the Tennessee Repertory Theatre, the state’s largest professional theater, is also by far the best funded. With an annual budget of more than $3 million, artistic director Mac Pirkle can afford to mount the large-scale musical productions, like last year’s Sound of Music, that have become The Rep’s signature. As Nashville’s only “equity theater”—meaning that the directors, actors and designers are paid Actors’ Equity Association union scale—The Rep attracts local and national professionals who can concentrate their full energies on each production without the distraction of a day job.
The Rep has expanded its initial mission—to produce high-quality productions for a broad audience—to include the creation and development of new musicals. This year’s season finale will be The Perfect 36, a new musical, commissioned by Pirkle, about the final battle for women’s suffrage in the Tennessee State Legislature.
The Nashville Academy Theatre, which kicks off its 63rd season this month, is one of the three oldest continuing professional children’s theaters in the country. NAT has staged imaginative, thought-provoking and entertaining works for children since 1931. With a top ticket price of $5.75, NAT is one of Nashville’s best bargains for children’s entertainment. Opportunities to enjoy NAT productions with your children are limited, however, to three “family weekend” performances per production. Aside from these performances, the marathon two performances a day NAT offers are open only to schoolchildren, who are brought in by the busload from all over Middle Tennessee.
Nashville’s newest professional company, the Mockingbird Public Theater, started off with a bang when its premiere production, Jean Anouilh’s Becket, won a First Night award (the local equivalent of the Tony Awards) for the 1993-94 season. The company is the brainchild of managing director David Alford, who convinced two fellow Tennessee classmates at the Juilliard School Drama Program to help him form a theater devoted to promoting the work of Southern artists. A native of Adams, Tenn., Alford moved home to develop the theater group, boosted by a $16,000 grant from the Fox Foundation.
Alford and partners Paul Michael Valley (an actor currently appearing in NBC’s Another World) and Tucker McCrady have since expanded the theater’s mission. In addition to staging works by Southern authors, Mockingbird will also offer classics and new works. “We want to provide a quality alternative to Broadway hits,” Alford explains. “That’s not to denigrate Broadway hits, but by giving people more options, we hope they’ll take notice of all the options that are available.” Mockingbird’s season this year will be limited to two productions: a Christmas sampler that will include a stage version of Truman Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory,” and a production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest this spring.
Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theater offers popular comedies, whodunits and an occasional drama for audiences who want to be entertained and well fed. The $30 weekend ticket price includes a full Southern-style buffet. Two professional productions—one on the Main Stage, a 300-seat theater in the round, and one on the more intimate Back Stage—often run simultaneously.
Community Theater
The Circle Players, Nashville’s oldest and most well established community theater, kicks off its 46th season this year—and its 16th in TPAC’s 300-seat Johnson Theater. Six annual productions run the gamut from lighthearted comedies and musicals to whodunits to dramas. Despite the high costs of renting and working in the TPAC space, Circle has managed not only to survive, but also thrive, while charging only $10 a ticket. The Circle’s focus on arts participation and access for everyone is evident at their productions, which have a relaxed, family atmosphere.
The renovated church that houses the Darkhorse Theater is one of the most comfortable and accessible small theater spaces in town. Following its amicable split with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival last year, the Darkhorse has attracted three resident companies—the Nashville Dance Project, a progressive dance company, the Mockingbird Public Theatre, and A.C.T. I, which will open its first season at Darkhorse this month. “Part of our mission has always been to provide an affordable space where a variety of theater artists can work,” explains the Darkhorse’s Peter Kurland. “With so many small theater groups in town now, that’s become more important. In addition, we bring in smaller touring shows that fall outside the realm of what you normally see in Nashville—both dance and theater.”
A.C.T. I’s managing director, Bob O’Connell, hopes to attract a larger audience by moving from the Looby Theatre to the Darkhorse. “Our original plan was to become a professional theater,” O’Connell explains, “but our location at the Looby inhibited our growth. It’s right across from the Fountain Square Cinemas, but many people told us they wouldn’t drive to that neighborhood at night.”
A.C.T. I offers one comedy each year—the ’95-’96 season starts with Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit—but the emphasis is on classical theater, including Shakespeare, restoration comedies and modern classics by playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. While A.C.T. I is a community theater, its productions often attract professional talent. “We do shows that actors and other artists wait their entire careers to do,” O’Connell says. “We have people knocking on our door to work on a production because they love the play.”
Actors’ Playhouse is celebrating its first full, regularly announced season, which runs through February. Formerly tucked into an attic above Papa John’s Pizza on West End Avenue, the theater company is also celebrating its recent move to Marathon Village, where, managing director Don Breedwell says, “We have a much larger space.”
Open to proposals from local directors, Actors’ Playhouse emphasizes alternative productions and new works as well as popular plays. “We’re definitely community theater—in fact, we’re proud of that,” Breedwell emphasizes. “Everyone is volunteering their time, and our whole emphasis is on a casual, homey atmosphere.”
Productions at Actors’ may also involve unusual promotions—August’s staging of Psycho Beach Party included a promotion tied to the bikini contest at Hooters. “We’re reaching out to people who don’t typically go to the theater,” Breedwell explains.
Two or three plays a year are staged at the Jewish Community Center’s Shalom Theatre, which produces everything from well known works to new plays. Managing director Bryan Cahen is justifiably proud of the fact that his company has boosted local playwright Cherie Bennett, who writes plays aimed at adolescents, by premiering two of her plays. “Our goal is to entertain our audiences, but we also want to stage thought-provoking work that you’re unlikely to see in other Nashville theaters,” he says.
The Mockingbird’s David Alford hopes the Nashville theater scene will benefit from the same principle that attracts clusters of fast food restaurants to the same highway exit. “You’re more likely to pull off the freeway if you have more options,” he says. “And with more theater choices available, we’re hoping people will find themselves deciding
