With opening night this Friday of Wes Driver and Greg Greene's Twilight of the Gods, Nashville's theater community adds an exciting new member to its list of production companies - Blackbird Theater, the new professional company in residence at David Lipscomb University's Shamblin Theatre.
The company's mission, according to its co-founders, is "To create entertaining, enlightening stage productions that reawaken audiences to the thrill of theater. Our shows will be intellectually challenging and imaginatively rendered, focusing on inventive original works, rarely produced plays by renowned playwrights, and one-of-a-kind special events-all of which celebrate the vitality and immediacy of the live theater experience."
Blackbird Theater will provide select Lipscomb students with opportunities to work beside theater professionals both onstage and backstage, while giving Lipscomb alumni and artists-in-residence Driver and Greene the space and support to realize their unique vision for "inventive, intellectually vigorous theater."
"Blackbird will showcase talenTed Nashville actors and stage technicians dedicated to high artistic and technical standards," Greene explained.
Blackbird will produce two shows a year: one original written by its founders, and an established piece that matches their "passion for smart, compelling theater - plays that are fiercely entertaining, yet imbued with intellectual heft and humor."
The company's debut production brings together some of history's most colorful characters, including Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Annie Oakley and Friedrich Nietzsche.
"These are just a few of the historical figures that convene, converse, and finally, fatally collide inTwilight of the Gods, the new comedic thriller," Driver says.
In the play, a shy, young woman arrives at a country manor, answering a strange invitation that claims to know something about her past. Stranger still, she's greeted by a man who looks, acts, and even quips like Mark Twain. It's explained that he is, in fact, the reincarnation of the great author, and he is soon joined by other historical figures, such as H.G. Wells, Florence Nightingale, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Before the woman can escape this bizarre scenario, she's confronted by the master of the house and the man behind the invitation, Rudolf Steiner. Steiner is a scientist and a mystic who nearly a hundred years ago, in his previous life, tried to lead mankind to a new epoch of social harmony and has now discovered and gathered the reincarnations of these great thinkers to finally realize his vision. The young woman, he claims, is the late poet Emily Dickinson, the final piece to his intricate plan.
After a dinner of spirited conversation - with arguments over religion, philosophy, and politics - his dream for a modern utopia quickly turns into a Gothic nightmare, and a battle of ideologies becomes a battle for survival.
Twilight of the Gods features a strong, established cast that includes Don Maley, acclaimed regional actor (best actor, 2004 Southeastern Theatre Competition), and Nashville theater veterans Wesley Paine, Caroline Davis, Brad Forrister, Patrick Kramer and Britt Byrd.
Previously, Driver and Greene have collaborated on a number of plays, screenplays and other projects, including a trilogy of comedic thrillers commissioned by former Lipscomb theater director Dr. Larry Brown. They began experimenting in the soon-to-emerge 24-hour play phenomenon, successfully writing, directing, and producing five one-acts.
Greene has served as a key creative developer of the children's video series JAM Films, having authored twenty-one screenplays, directing many of them. Driver has mounted productions for the Algonquin Players (which he also co-founded), Lipscomb University and Towne Centre Theatre, with a particular focus on the plays of Tom Stoppard. He is also a screenwriter whose work has received attention from Chesterfield Writer's Film Project, sponsored by Steven Spielberg, and the Motion Picture Academy's Nicholl Screenwriting Competition. His script, The Valet, won top honors in Cinestory's inaugural Short Screenplay Competition.
