by Sophie Kellerman | Dec 24, 2013 | News Slider, Sports
Lipscomb’s Lady Bisons volleyball players know how important it is to have other students supporting their efforts, so they didn’t even hesitate when their coach asked them if they wanted to go to the Lipscomb production of Les Misérables this autumn. Coach Brandon Rosenthal took a vote a couple weeks in advance and asked his team who wanted to plan on attending the show. Every hand in the huddle shot up without hesitation. “As athletes, we don’t always realize the hard work that theatre requires. It is foreign to us,” said junior Megan Stout. “The show was really eye-opening to how much dedication it requires to put on a show like that.” The team took advantage of a rare evening off to attend the show as a team on Nov. 6. “This was my first time seeing a Lipscomb show,” said sophomore Molly Spitznagle. “I was mesmerized the whole time.” The team’s busy fall semester does not allow for much time to attend events like these. They were leaving the next day for a match against ETSU in Johnson City. “We know how important it is to have supporters at our games,” said senior captain Caitlin Dotson. “The fact that we can support our classmates in the same way is awesome.” Casey Edwards, a junior theatre major who played Éponine in the production, knows from experience how important it is for both groups of students to be supported. Her freshman year, she played golf for Lipscomb and was in multiple performances. Golf and acting, however, are both full-time jobs, and she decided to pursue theatre. “We practiced over 20 hours a...
by Emily Snell | Jun 9, 2012 | News Slider
The power of social media is all too evident to today’s teenagers. When technology abuse causes two girls to ruin each other, parents and school officials intervene, struggling to create peace and reconciliation. This reality is the center of “Exposure,” a play written, directed and performed by Lipscomb students. “I think it’s a play that speaks particularly to parents, and I hope parents in the audience are encouraged to be good parents, especially in a world that has changed a lot with social media and technology,” said Director Sawyer Wallace, a recent Lipscomb graduate. The play, written by senior Whitney Vaughn, a double major in theater and Law, Justice and Society, won the playwriting competition at last year’s Christian Scholars’ Conference. It was performed June 6-9 during the 2012 conference on campus. The Christian Scholars’ Conference annually brings together Christian scholars from various academic backgrounds “to develop their own academic research and to reflect on the integration of scholarship and faith.” As described in the play’s program, the work is “a riveting play about a high school guidance counselor’s attempt to reconcile two teenage girls who have used social media to destroy each other’s lives. It exposes the pervasive quality of social media and the damaging effects of poor parenting.” Vaughn, who is interning in Washington, D.C. with the Republican National Committee, said the idea for the play came last year when she was in Mike Fernandez’s playwriting class. Fernandez told the students to consider the big moments in their lives and find common denominators between the events. “The common denominator in all of the good and bad that I’ve been...
by Nicci Carney | Nov 2, 2011 | News Slider
Forty students from across disciplines come together beginning Thursday for the Lipscomb University theater presentation of a family friendly take on “Hairspray.” This story tells of the dreams of a Baltimore girl who hopes to make it on a popular 1960s TV show. However, once she makes it, she realizes dreams don’t always matrch reality. The story also has her encountering issues of the day, or any day for that matter, personal appearance and race. The main character is Tracy Turnblad — played by junior Whitney Vaughn — the Baltimore teenager who sees past appearance and race and her goal is to make the “Corny Collins Show” (Corny played by junior Luciano Vignola), but she comes across some obstacles that make her almost lose this dream. Amber von Tussel and her mom Velma (played by Sydni Hayes and Leslie Marberry) pull out all the stops to stop Tracy from being on the show. The musical will take you on a comical, thought-provoking journey. The Lipscomb touch makes this popular Broadway show Saturday Morning-kid friendly so the entire family can come out “from 2 to 102,” said Mike Fernandez, co-chairman of Lipscomb’s theater department. The musical runs Thursday-Sunday, with a Sunday afternoon matinee. Tickets are $15 dollars and student tickets for $5 dollars. However SGA has just announced that 800 students will receive free tickets and they will be available this week at the Lipscomb Box Office or a “Hairspray” display table in Bison Square or in the Student Center. The free tickets are available for a limited time. For more information and where to purchase tickets go to www.theater.lipscomb.edu....
by despotmj | Jun 23, 2011 | News Slider
When the Franklin Theatre re-opened its doors on Friday, June 3, 3011, hundreds of people packed the downtown Franklin streets in order to celebrate the restoration of one of the greatest landmarks of community’s history. The original Franklin Theatre opened its doors in 1937, and at the time the price of admission was 10 cents for children and 25 cents for adults. Through the years the theatre was a tremendously popular staple of the downtown Franklin streets, as in several ways it set trends for an ever growing community. Some of these trends included becoming the first air-conditioned building, as well as housing the first public restrooms in 1938. This landmark set precedents in other areas of the community as well, as it did in 1940 when the theatre manager and city agreed to allow movies to be shown on Sundays, as long as they weren’t operating during church hours. Through the years the theatre gained more and more popularity, even after a name change to the Franklin Cinema, and in 2004, the Franklin Cinema hosted the world premiere of Peter Berg’s, Friday Night Lights, a popular film featuring local celebrity Tim McGraw. Again in 2005, the cinema held the world premiere of Elizabethtown. A movie packed with star power including Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. So when the theatre closed its doors in 2007, a great hole was left in the community which had grown accustomed to seeing modern films in a very nostalgic setting. “This place means so much to so many people,” said Lindsay George, Community Relations Director of the Franklin Theatre. “Everyone has a story...
by Aaron Schmelzer | Feb 24, 2011 | News Slider
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