Professional Collaborations
The Department of Theatre is proud to partner with Nashville theatre companies, both professional and semi-professional, to give our students and faculty the best opportunities possible for development, growth, and networking. Lipscomb theatre students learn from those directly in the field, working side-by-side with them either as performers on the stage or in the capacity of backstage crews. The faculty utilize the chance to continue sharpening their directing and/or designing skills with these unique and special collaborations. In the past few years, we have collaborated with the following companies:
Tennessee Performing Arts Center
The Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to providing and supporting the presentation of the performing arts. TPAC’s mission is to lead with excellence in the performing arts and arts education, creating meaningful and relevant experiences to enrich lives, strengthen communities, and support economic vitality. Its four stages are home to Nashville Ballet, Nashville Opera, Nashville Repertory Theatre, HCA/TriStar Health Broadway at TPAC, TPACPresents, and a variety of special engagements. TPAC administers one of the largest and most comprehensive arts-in-education programs in the United States, offering learning opportunities for adults and serving more than 1.5 million students from pre-school to high school over the past two decades. TPAC is the largest performing house in Tennessee. In 2016, TPAC and Lipscomb University Department of Theatre began collaboration in hosting the Nashville High School Musical Theatre Awards, or Spotlight Awards.
Nashville Repertory Theatre
Nashville Repertory Theatre (NRT) exists to serve through creating “Ah-ha!” moments that inspire empathy, prod intellectual and emotional engagement, and expand the creative capacity of audience and artists though the dynamic connection unique to live theatre. NRT seeks to be a strong and vital professional regional theatre that is an indispensable part of our community's creative life, widely embraced and deeply valued as an essential source for illuminating artistic experiences and exciting entertainment, and recognized as a model of sustainability that is home for a thriving community of professional artists and whose name is synonymous with excellence in every aspect. Nashville Repertory Theatre was founded in 1985 by Martha Ingram and Mac Pirkle as an outgrowth of a production company formed in 1983 to produce the first work for the education program for the new Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC). In April 2018, NRT and Lipscomb University presented an exciting co-production of Inherit the Wind at TPAC.
Nashville Shakespeare Festival
The mission of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival (NSF) is to educate and entertain the mid-South community through professional Shakespearean experiences. NSF enriches and unifies the community with bold, innovative and relevant productions along with empowering, participatory educational programs, setting the community standard of excellence in educational outreach and performances of Shakespeare’s plays. During its twenty-seven year history, the Festival has grown into one of the region’s leading professional theatres. In 2017, NSF partnered with Lipscomb University's Department of Theatre to present an all-female Richard II featuring a mixed cast of professionals and students. In 2020, the teams reunited to put on a daring production of As You Like It.
Blackbird Theater Company
Since their start in 2010, Blackbird Theater has gained acclaim as Nashville’s most intellectually adventurous theater, mounting elaborate productions of literate scripts with many of the region’s top actors and theatre designers. Past shows include the original comedic thriller Twilight of the Gods (named Best New Play in the Nashville Scene’s “Best of Nashville 2010” edition), Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, G.K. Chesterton’s Magic, John Logan’s Red (for which Dean Mike Fernandez won “Best Director”), and the rarely produced Stephen Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures (named 2012’s “Best Musical” by the Nashville Scene). Their 2013-2014 season included George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman directed by Beki Baker, and Roger’s Version, an adaptation of a John Updike novel. In 2015, Blackbird mounted an original musical called Myth, and in 2016 produced The Crucible in conjunction with Lipscomb University Theatre. Blackbird is a professional non-profit theater company founded by Wes Driver and Greg Greene, Lipscomb Theatre alumni. Many of their shows are directed, designed, and performed by Lipscomb theatre faculty and students, as well as Nashville theatre professionals. All of these productions except Myth were produced at Lipscomb University.
