theater companies here. There is a lot of theater happening, but you have to search it out, and there are very few places. And there are one, maybe two reviewers in town who will do theater reviews.” “If you like the arts, why are you not making it to see theater, and what can we do to make sure you’ve at least heard the name Street Theatre Company?” Cathy asks me. “You are a perfect example of someone who would love our stuff, so how do we reach Lindsey?” Jason adds, “You are our goal, Lindsey—to find people who don’t know just how much they would enjoy theater . . . how cool it is—I hate the word cool, but it is fun and it’s not your father’s theater. I respect what has come before, but I’m using it to have a conversation in 2015.” The first show of the 2016 season will be In the Heights. “It’s written by the same gentleman who is doing Hamilton right now, and it’s an all-Latino cast,” Cathy explains. “It’s hip-hop flare, and nobody else has done that here yet, and it was big. It won Tony Awards for Best Musical just a few years ago, so this should definitely reach out to a whole new audience of people if we can get people to come see it.” With the transition of artistic directors, there are endless possibilities for what Jason’s visions will bring to the future of Street Theatre Company. “With a theater like this, when the founder steps down in the way that she is and hands it off to a new driver, that shows extreme fortitude, and it also shows that the theater itself can handle it,” Jason says. “And so, my goal for my first year is to make sure that all of our friends here in Nashville know that Street Theatre is here. We’re doing exactly what they expect us to do plus a bunch of stuff they don’t expect us to do. And then, my longer term goal is to make sure that Street Theatre—along with some other theaters in the city— becomes a force in this city and not just a sidebar. I’d like Nashville to be one of the main cosmopolitan cities in the country where you can go and see good theater.”
# NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
///// / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 6 5