Thursday, May 5, 2011

Open Mic Night! - 4/28/11



Thursday, April 28, 2011, was our most popular Open Mic to date! We had approximately thirty performers forming a line to sign up prior to the show, doubling our usual turnout!

April Foole's Day Vaudeville Circus & Jugband Review - 4/1/11



It was standing room only at the playhouse on this unconventional Friday evening, for the April Foole's Day Vaudeville Circus, in which The Eggplant Faerie Players and Tom Foolery entertained and shocked us with their antics and death defying unicycle juggling, Murfreesboro's Jake Leg Stompers delivered their raucous and suggestive jug band classics, and Miss Leela Sophina, the Queen of the Air, tested the structural integrity of the playhouse's air vents with her trapeze talents. All hardware is still intact and the show was fabulous.

Sleepy Eyed Fox with Jen Richardson and Mary Summerlin - 1/27/11


On Thursday, January 27, 2011, Center Stage funded our first concert of the season, which featured the young, bright-eyed and bushy tailed Sleepy Eyed Fox, an up and coming eclectic folk-rock outfit from the Nashville area. Captivating local singer/songwriters Jen Richardson & Mary Summerlin opened the show.

Open Mic Night! - 1/20/11

Our first Open Mic of Spring 2011 occurred on Thursday, January 20.

Open Mic Night! - 12/9/10

A chance to unwind from studying for finals, we opened the mic up yet again for students and community members on Thursday, December 9, 2010.

Anne Waldman and Rebecca Neel - 12/2/10



In the second edition of events incorporated into Professor Andrew Smith's QEP Award winning American Literature initiative known as the Living Writers Project, second generation beat poet and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Anne Waldman visited the playhouse on Thursday, December 2, 2010, for a performance of her poetry and prose pieces as well as to lead a writing workshop. Local writer Rebecca Neel opened for Waldman.

The Night Kite Poetry Revival - 10/26/10


For the second year in a row, Write Bloody Publishing authors visited the Backdoor Playhouse with the Night Kite Poetry Revival. Center Stage funded the riveting spoken word event on Tuesday, October 26, 2010, featuring a masterful weaving of words by Individual World Poetry Slam Champion Buddy Wakefield, Pushcart Prize nominee Anis Mojgani, and President of Write Bloody Derrick Brown.

David Lazar & Michael O'Rourke - 10/14/10



As a part of Professor Andrew Smith's QEP Award winning American Literature course syllabus known as the Living Writers Project and funded by Center Stage, David Lazar, author of Body of Brooklyn, a collection of essays about his childhood which were studied by Smith's students, performed a reading of his works on Thursday, October 14, 2010. TTU English Professor Dr. Michael O'Rourke also read excerpts from his new book, Paul Bunyan Lives! And Other Tales From the Natural World.

MerseySide – 10/9/10

On what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday, and what was our own Professor Andrew Smith's 43rd, we hosted Beatles cover band MerseySide, aptly named for the British county which encompasses the Fab Four's home of Liverpool, on Saturday, October 9, 2010, as they played to a house packed with invasion rockers.