Gaslight Dinner Theatre presents Driving Miss Daisy Feb. 16-March 11
Release Date: 1/17/2006. Expired: 3/11/2006
The changes in race relations this country experienced through the latter half of the 20th century are reflected in the growing relationship between an elderly southern woman and her African American chauffeur in Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer-winning play Driving Miss Daisy.
The Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center in Dickson presents Driving Miss Daisy Feb. 16-March 11. Evening performances are Fridays and Saturdays with senior matinees for patrons 55 and older on Thursdays and Fridays. Driving Miss Daisy is sponsored by The Bank of Dickson.
Tickets are $27 and include a 6:30 p.m. buffet dinner and 7:30 p.m. performance. Matinee tickets are $17 for a 12 p.m. buffet lunch and 1 p.m. performance.
Uhry’s 1987 play tells the story of Daisy Wertham, an elderly Jewish woman in Atlanta, whose failing driving skills prompt her son, Boolie, to hire Hoke Coleman as his mother’s chauffeur in 1948. At first Daisy is resentful and refuses all offers of help. But over 20 years, as both Daisy and Hoke grow older and frailer, their relationship grows into a deep-rooted friendship as they learn to rely on each other.
The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Outer Critics Circle Award.
A 1989 movie version starred Jessica Tandy as Daisy, Morgan Freeman as Hoke and Dan Aykroyd as Boolie. It won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Tandy. Freeman earned a Best Actor nomination and Aykroyd a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Born in Atlanta, Uhry graduated from Brown University and began work as a lyricist and librettist for musicals, including America’s Sweetheart. His first major success came with The Robber Bridegroom in 1975 and he went on to co-write the screenplay for Mystic Pizza in 1988.
Driving Miss Daisy is the first of three plays known as Uhry’s “Atlanta Trilogy.” The Last Night of Ballyhoo won the 1977 Tony Award as Best Play as well as awards from the American Theatre Critics Association, the Outer Critics Circle and The Drama League. Parade is Uhry’s Tony-winning 1998 musical about the lynching of factory owner Leo Frank.
The Renaissance Center production of Driving Miss Daisy will be directed by Pacer Harp, managing director of the Gaslight Dinner Theatre. It will feature Marilyn Fair as Daisy, Bret Wilson as Hoke and Hal Partlow as Boolie.
Fair, an adjunct voice instructor at The Renaissance Center, will be appearing in her first production at the center. She has had roles in various productions throughout the Southeast as well as Off-Broadway in New York. Previous productions include The Fantasticks, Dial M for Murder, The Boys Next Door, Crimes of the Heart, Christy the Musical, My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Annie, Pirates of Penzance, Chicago, A Chorus Line and others. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Arts from Florida Southern College and has appeared in numerous television commercials and print advertisements.
Wilson is appearing in his first Gaslight production. He has had roles in several productions for The Renaissance Center’s Mind Enriching Theatre (MET) series, including productions of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe and A Christmas Carol Revisited. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater Performance from the University of Memphis and has worked with theater companies such as Memphis Black Rep, the Tennessee Rep, Virginia Shakespeare Festival, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Mockingbird Theater, Nashville Children’s Theater and the Robertson County Playhouse. Wilson is currently the artistic director of the Sylvan Street Christian Theater Ministry where he also service as production director.
Partlow is managing director of the Renaissance Repertory Company and director of the MET series at The Renaissance Center. Originally from upstate New York, he has worked professionally throughout the country for over 20 years and has appeared in or directed most Repertory Company productions since the center opened, including Death of a Salesman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jane Eyre, Twelfth Night, Davy Crockett: Titan of Tennessee, MacBeth, The Jungle Book, As You Like It, and Richard III. In the Gaslight Dinner Theatre, Hal has appeared as Sparky in Forever Plaid, Lucien P. Smith in The Boys Next Door, Bobby Franklyn in Run for Your Wife, Andy in The Star Spangled Girl and Owen Musser in The Foreigner. Directing credits for the Renaissance Center include Twelfth Night, Richard III, The Belle of Amherst, The Glass Menagerie, Grace and Glorie, Dearly Departed, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus and Nuncrackers.
Tickets for the Gaslight Dinner Theatre production of Driving Miss Daisy are on sale now. For more information, call (615)740-5600. To purchase tickets, call (615)740-5570.
The Renaissance Center is a fine arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.
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