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                                We invite you to take a journey with Nashville playwright, composer and lyricist, Randi Michaels Block and her awesome new musical Guess Who's Coming to Seder? I was honored to run the auditions for the first reading that took place last fall at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater (www.darkhorsetheater.com). In 32 years of working on script showcases, I have never seen anything like the turnout for that, the 130 seat house so full for both performances, that people were sitting on the steps,  and the brilliant work by our home team actors brought audiences to their feet two nights in a row. It really doesn't surprise me that the show is set to open in Tulsa in May, with Ted Swindley continuing on board as director.

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      Nashville get ready - The Department of Theatre and Dance at Belmont University (www.belmont.edu) is about to offer us a chance to see one of the most powerful pieces of theatre ever written, Federico Garcia Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba. The cast includes Diana Holland in the role of Maria Josefa, mother of the tyrannical Bernarda Alba, and grandmother to Bernrada's daughters who are all locked up in this "casa" like nuns in a convent.

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            CROWNS: The Gospel Musical, by Regina Taylor, is in rehearsal for it's Nashville premiere, Thursday, January 26th at Christ Church Cathedral as part of the Church's Sacred  Space for the City series. I had a chance to converse with the playwright and learn a bit more about her career and the history of CROWNS.

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Nashville has been chosen as the first city outside of New York to participate in Disney Theatrical Group's "Disney Musicals in Schools" program, and here's how it happened. As a presenter of Broadway tours, TPAC works with The Broadway League and this year, at the Broadway League's Spring Road Conference, Disney announced that they were looking to take this program, after 2 years in NYC, "on the road" to other cities across the country.

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           Out Front on Main is a classy and classic example of what has come to be called "storefront theatre," the kind you'd expect to find in cities like Chicago, San Francisco or Seattle, except Out Front on Main is in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Artistic Director George Manus has converted a former bridal shop at 1511 Main Street, into a fun and intimate jewel box of a theatre that would be the envy of many a theatrical impresario in our urban age. Seating 50, Out Front has everything a theatre needs, from a nifty little lobby whose walls are covered with company posters, to a mobile tech booth, eclectic seating and a swell stage space that currently sports Manus' handsome set for Tracy Lett's really weird play Bug.

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Another superlative show hits the boards out on Elm Hill Pike this weekend with Cathy Street's production of The Bad Seed. Those familiar with this piece only from the 1956 film, might be surprised by this stage adaptation. I went expecting something like Damien or The Omen- that is to say, some kind of horror show about a demonic child. What I discovered was a serious stage play that fuses the psychological thriller with a creepy parody of such '50s sitcoms as "Ozzie & Harriet", "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver."

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                                        In 1999, I had a musical smack on Times Square - in the sadly departed Lamb's Theatre. I can't call it "Broadway" but I can't say it wasn't, either. For me it was. For me, "Broadway" is a geographical thing. I did not know when I headed to New York that "Broadway" is determined by a contract, but it is. In any case, that 1999 production of Bernice Lee's Nellie, with my music and co-lyrics (can I say that?) fulfilled my "Broadway" ambition. With some divine intervention, I managed to tear myself away from Mecca and find myself in Music City USA.

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Nashville hit songwriter Rand Bishop has something to offer artists who would like to check out the Nashville scene - he is converting his charming home into a home-away-from-home for visiting songwriters.  Two rooms on the ground floor of his Paris Ave. abode - one with twin beds, one with a queen sized bed - will be available at very artist-friendly rates for folks who would like to hang out in "a home in which hit songs have been written" and commune with one of Nashville's finest talents, an award winning author of songs, books and screen and stage plays.

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                                 "A happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life" - Kinky Friedman

You may have heard of a show called Always...Patsy Cline. Now, for 10 points, who wrote it?

Since it first hit the stage of the Ryman Auditorium (original home of the Grand Ol' Opry) 16 years ago, and in spite of the 8 productions since then and the fact that everybody in Nashville has seen the show at least once, even folks here, including theatre folks, don't recognize the name Ted Swindley. That's the Nashville equivalent of loving Hello, Dolly! but having no idea who Jerry Herman is.

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Every American school child from the age of 6 up needs to see Fly Girl, Mary McCallum's supberbly crafted play about the life of Bessie Coleman, the first African-American, male or female, to hold an international pilot's license. The play needs to be seen not only because it shares the story of Coleman and her accomplishments, but also because of what it says about a critical moment in American history, a moment at which the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, began to manifest as a social and psychological force seen especially in the lives and careers of such amazing American women as Coleman, Ida B. Wells and Madam C. J. Walker.