Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's BOOM Brings First Sideshow Season to a Close 6/14-17

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom (the most produced play in America 2009-2010) debuts Thursday, June 14 as the final production from the emerging artists of the Actor's Bridge's Sideshow Ensemble, bringing to Nashville what theatre audiences all over the country have been raving about.

Sideshow is a part of an Actors Bridge initiative launched in 2011 to foster new artists via a ten-month-long training immersion and theatrical cross training program, that seeks to strengthen the core disciplines and bolster additional skills of the 12 emerging artists.

Sideshow kicked off its season with the success of Nashville's first-ever Sideshow Fringe Festival early last fall (which returns for its second year August 2-5, 2012) and the regional premiere of Will Eno's The Flu Season.

boom will be the final project of the inaugural Sideshow season. Nachtrieb's play explores the influence of fate versus randomness in the course of one's life in an epic and intimate comedy. With "sex to change the course of the world" on his mind, a graduate student's online personal advertisement lures a journalism student to his subterranean research lab under the pretense of an evening of "no strings attached" sex. But when a major global catastrophic event strikes their planet, their date takes on evolutionary significance and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

The New York Times praised boom, writing that "Mr. Nachtrieb has a gift for darkly funny dialogue and an appealing way of approaching big themes sideways. boom winds up speaking, quietly and piquantly, to our enduring fascination with and need for myths about the beginning of life  as well as its end."

Belmont's Black Box Theatre is the venue for the show's June 14-17 run. Tickets are available for $10 at sideshow.eventbrite.com.

Jeffrey Ellis is a Nashville-based writer, editor and critic, who's been covering the performing arts in Tennessee for more than 25 years. He is the recipient of the Tennessee Theatre Association's Distinguished Service Award for his coverage of theatre in the Volunteer State and was the founding editor/publisher of Stages, the Tennessee Onstage Monthly. He is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and is the founder/executive producer of The First Night Honors, held during Labor Day Weekend, which honor oustanding theater artists in Tennessee in recognition of their lifetime achievements and includes The First Night Star Awards and the Most Promising Actors. Midwinter's First Night, held the first Sunday in January after New Year's Day, honors outstanding productions and performances throughout the state. Further, Ellis directed the Nashville premiere of La Cage Aux Folles, The Last Night of Ballyhoo and An American Daughter, as well as award-winning productions of Damn Yankees, Company, Gypsy and The Rocky Horror Show, with Ellis honored by The Tennessean as best director of a musical for both Company and Rocky Horror.

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