Clarence Brown Theatre Artistic Director Calvin MacLean Announces Retirement

The University of Tennessee Theatre Department and the Clarence Brown Theatre have announced that Theatre Department Head and CBT Producing Artistic Director Calvin MacLean will be retiring August 1, 2021, after 15 years in the position. During MacLean’s tenure, the…

Hope Springs Eternal — CBT Hopes to Return to Live Theatre in Spring of 2021

BY ALAN SHERROD   Although hope has taken many forms in the pandemic and socio-politically ravaged days of 2020, so too have some painful realities. For Knoxville theatre-goers and patrons of Clarence Brown Theatre, reality has unfortunately taken the upper…

UT MFA Acting Program Moves Up To Eighth in National Ranking

BY ALAN SHERROD   Knoxville theatre-goers have long recognized the benefits of the University of Tennessee Theatre Department’s MFA Acting Program, a program that forms the backbone of the resident Clarence Brown Theatre’s professional productions. However, local attention has been…

Review: CBT’s ‘People Where They Are’ – A Lesson in Escaping the Gravity of Our Past

By Alan Sherrod   In the spring of 1955, much of the Southern U.S. was a simmering kettle of racial segregation, civil rights repression, and worker/workplace abuses—one that was on the verge of boiling over into a full scale struggle…

Review: CBT’s ‘Santaland Diaries’ – A Delicious Clash of Holiday Comedy and Reality

By Alan Sherrod   Two Christmas seasons working as an elf in Macy’s flagship store on New York City’s Herald Square was the inspiration for David Sedaris’ essay Santaland Diaries. Read by Sedaris on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in…

Review: CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’ – The Best of Dazzling Possibilities

By Alan Sherrod   For the last year or so, productions of Leonard Bernstein’s comic operetta Candide have been popping up all over the globe, from Europe to South America, thanks in large part to the encouragement and celebration surrounding…

Preview: Collaboration Key To CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’

By Alan Sherrod   It’s a bit ironic that Voltaire’s Candide, a novella that satirizes the 18th Century philosophy of optimism and its inevitable disillusionment, has required plenty of optimism and perseverance from those that have sought to turn it…

KSO and CBT To Team Up Again in 2018 With Bernstein’s ‘Candide’

(Above: CBT Artistic Director Calvin MacLean and KSO Music Director Aram Demirjian) Artistic collaborations may seem like natural extensions of a performing arts scene, but they aren’t necessarily that easy to accomplish for a number of reasons. However, in a…

Review: Rob Caisley’s ‘The Open Hand’ at CBT

REVIEW: The premiere of Rob Caisley’s ‘The Open Hand’ at the Lab Theatre of Clarence Brown Theatre

Review: Marble City Opera’s Premieres a Stunning Success

Although Marble City Opera hasn’t even reached its 2nd birthday yet, Knoxville’s chamber opera company has definitely found a place on the musical map for itself. The company’s opening performance of two short operas (world premieres, no less) by Larry Delinger…

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