Christopher Blank

History comes face to face with creative license on Tuesday when the Broadway tour of "Million Dollar Quartet" finally brings its re-enactment of rock and roll's most legendary jam session to the Orpheum.

For most of his career, August Wilson focused his plays on Pittsburgh's Hill District, a predominantly black neighborhood that saw its once-good prospects fade into poverty and blight. Wilson sees the community as a microcosm of America, where many African-Americans ...

Charles “Lil Buck” Riley can now add dancing with Madonna at the Super Bowl to his impressive list of accomplishments. And next: He’s going on tour with her, he said. Riley, 23, who grew up near the Westwood neighborhood of ...

A new, three-day festival this summer will celebrate women's contributions to the performing arts.

To writers, scholars and aficionados of mordant wit, Oscar Wilde bequeathed a quotation for nearly every occasion. For instance: On dating: "The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and ...

A new, three-day festival this summer will celebrate women’s contributions to the performing arts. The inaugural Women’s Theatre Festival of Memphis is now accepting submissions of plays, musicals, operas and other works that may be featured at the event on ...

Though playwright Katori Hall may be better known to theatergoers on Broadway and London’s West End, the native Memphian will finally see her name on a hometown marquee next year. Her award-winning play, “The Mountaintop,” will be staged as a ...

In his apartment in New York's famed Chelsea Hotel, pianist Bruce Levingston surrounds himself with mementos of his Southern upbringing.

In 1902, the home gadget maker Hamilton Beach (now known for its commercial ice shavers and fruit juicers) patented what was then only the world's fifth electrical appliance. Behind the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle and toaster, this new electromechanical ...

When Ned Canty steps onto the set of Johann Strauss Jr.'s comic operetta "Die Fledermaus," he looks disproportionately small and way overdressed. Four Romantic-era paintings of buxom nude women -- each about 15 feet tall -- tower over him like ...

Billie Holiday had one foot in the grave in early 1959 when her doctor told her she had to give up alcohol or die.

"Do you believe in clubs for women?" asks one old chap of another. "Sure! If every other form of persuasion fails," comes the reply. Thus goes the sporting persiflage in Eve Merriam's satire, "The Club," set in a posh gentlemen's ...

Novelty in the performing arts is rare in Memphis, mostly because it's risky. Nearly every artist yearns to put on the Never-Before-Seen Spectacle that will leave people in rapture for years to come. They want to tell their stories in ...

Charles "Lil Buck" Riley was riding in the car with his ballet teacher, Katie Smythe, when she put a famous classical tune on the CD player and asked if he could dance to it.

Better than any writer of his era, Charles Dickens knew how to draw tears from the most arid of eyeballs. It's a testament to his 168-year-old novella, "A Christmas Carol," that we still celebrate the holiday season by remembering Ebenezer ...

Every few years, whenever Cathy Rigby hits the road with another national tour of "Peter Pan," Playhouse on the Square has to drum up a different December musical to entertain the thousands of schoolchildren bused in for their holiday field ...

For those who are seriously devoted to the holidays, any discussion about the best decade for American Christmas music -- the 1940s or the 1950s -- might best be settled with snowballs.

As a former violinist for the New York Philharmonic, Michael Gilbert has performed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony under a slew of world-famous conductors. He remembers Leonard Bernstein's personal way of launching into the opening four-note motif, which seemed to burst forth ...

Max McLean laughs diabolically when a reporter tells him of a recent quest to find a copy of C.S. Lewis' popular novel "The Screwtape Letters" in Memphis. Every copy had been checked out at every library branch. At the bookstore, ...

There are few real auteurs in the Memphis theater scene, but Ekundayo Bandele is one of them. As the executive director of Hattiloo Theatre, he has the space, time and know-how to carry out an artistic vision, from the moment ...

Since writing his first play in 1991, David E. Talbert has expanded his entertainment empire as a writer, director and producer of urban theater. His 13th play, "What My Husband Doesn't Know," opens Thursday at the Cannon Center for the ...

It’s tempting to divide Memphis’ dance scene into two camps, Ballet Memphis and everyone else. Sure, there’s a level of precision that the full-time professional company can achieve in its sunlit studio out in Cordova, but that isn’t to say ...

Three dance companies open shows in Memphis this weekend. They all have good qualities: new works, historical relevance, diversity of movement and interesting themes.

The production opens to the most critical audience of its tour -- a theater full of strong, and well-informed opinions on the subject of Memphis.

At the Tony Awards ceremony in June 2010, the journalists who cover Broadway theater mingled in the pressroom predicting the likely winner of the evening's best musical. The assumed front-runner, "Fela!," was the inspiring true story of the Nigerian musician ...

Jon Jory, the playwright and former director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, has a knack for teasing warmth and lightness out of fusty dialogue gleaned from the novels of Jane Austen. In "Emma," which opened last week on Theatre ...

Tennessee Shakespeare Company abides by the notion that staging the Bard's works en plein air -- as the painters might say -- brings us closer to an authentic Elizabethan playgoing experience. In days of olde, the Lord Chamberlain's Men would ...

Tennessee Shakespeare Company opens its fourth season this weekend in Shelby Farms with "Macbeth," an eerie tragedy that befits a bucolic setting on a chilly October night. So bring a tartan blanket and “screw your courage to the sticking place” ...

August Wilson didn't start out his career intending to write a total of 10 plays, one set in each decade of the 20th century. But that's what he accomplished by the time of his death in 2005.

There was still some minimal interplay of cuisine and dance Saturday night at Ballet Memphis' $600-per-couple fundraising dinner held at Bridges, but not so much that a gastronome would shed a tear of sympathy for his roasted lamb .

In spite of the fact that David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" is nearly 30 years old and many people have seen the film version of it, you might be surprised to learn that it's still a controversial ...

A new day is coming when the super-hit musical “Les Miserables” can finally be staged by just about anyone, not just the professionals in New York and London. Yes, soon anyone who has ever driven around town singing “On My ...

In her 1970 debut novel "The Bluest Eye," Toni Morrison introduced the world to her first batch of embattled, damaged, off-beat or otherwise unusual characters. No one in her Faulkner-sized assortment carries a heavier burden than Pecola Breedlove, a quiet, ...

If you had butterflies in your stomach while opening this section of the newspaper today (or while clicking the above headline on our website), it's likely that you have some interest in musical theater.

On a sunny afternoon last April, the enormous, colorful objects currently on display at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis were paraded before the public. Literally. As in, they were built for a parade.

Dear Disney Channel: Please come up with some new ideas. We were impressed a few years ago when you convinced millions of kids that having artistic talent was at least as cool as having basketball skills. As a former drama ...

Folks who participate in the local theater scene often describe their tight-knit community as a "family," with the usual dysfunction that goes with it. It seems fitting, therefore, that one of last season's most admired productions by both actors and ...

When your neighborhood high school drama teacher thumbs through the catalog of shows that most parents would deem acceptable for their innocent babes, "Bye Bye Birdie" is at the top of the list, and not just because it starts with ...

Like many kids growing up during the 1980s, Jonathan Blanchard wanted to sing like Michael Jackson or Prince. It was never to be. The summer before 11th grade, his singing voice took a nosedive. While it's not a voice tailor-made ...

Television talk show host Wendy Williams brings her "Say It Like You Mean It Summer Tour" to Wolfchase Galleria today. In addition, wannabe celebrities can compete for a guaranteed spot in front of producers at the Houston "American Idol" auditions ...

Judging from recent economic headlines, a newly minted college graduate has as much chance landing a cushy job in corporate America as a camel has passing through the eye of a needle. Jobs? Just ask the currently unemployed: there are ...

The people who pay their respects, some year after year, at the ornamented gates of Graceland have a love-hate relationship with numbers.

Memphis arts groups will receive more than $1.7 million in operating support through ArtsMemphis grants this year, a 2.5 percent increase in funding over last year, organization officials said. The Memphis Symphony Orchestra continues to be the highest-funded organization, with ...

Although Memphis is a majority-black city, African-Americans passionate about the arts too often find themselves in a minority.

Ballet Memphis celebrates its 25th anniversary in the fall with a retrospective of popular works and a new ballet by Julia Adam based on "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Actress and writer Florence "Flo" Roach has penned a Father's Day weekend tribute to all the good men out there. "Calling All Men" is a one-woman (and 100 men) show that combines music, dancing, spoken word poetry and comedy to ...

ArtsMemphis president and CEO Susan Schadt is the recipient of the 2011 Michael Newton Award for leadership in fundraising for the arts. In presenting the award, the Washington-based advocacy group Americans for the Arts cited her “visionary approach” to arts ...

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded three Memphis arts groups a total of $80,000 in its second round of grants this year.

When community theater is at its best, you can actually feel the community spirit radiating from the stage. It's a warm, tingly sensation delivered through the ferocious energy and pride of locals who've dedicated a big honking chunk of their ...

At the final note of Saturday night's concert by the Eroica Ensemble, conductor Michael Gilbert thrust his baton toward the heavens as if spearing a low-hanging star. The gesture was as much a symbol of triumph as it was a ...