Talking life, theater and the sacrifices artists make for creation

Every other Friday for This Is Nashville, I hop out of my host chair and into the passenger seat to ride shotgun with a fellow Middle Tennessean. In honor of the performing arts theme for this Friday’s episode, native Tennessean Drew Ogles with the Nashville Repertory Theater picked me up at the NPR headquarters, and we hit the road. 

In 2018, Drew Ogles moved from East Tennessee to Nashville to become the executive director of the Nashville Repertory Theater. He had no idea a global pandemic was looming. None of us did. Alas, he and the Nashville Rep persevered and are back for the holiday season. Right now, they’re gearing up to perform ELF the musical.

Ogles got his love for music and theater as a young child. He wanted to be a member of the rock band, KISS. But his hands were too small to effectively play the guitar, so his mother signed him up for piano lessons. The rest is history.

“That’s where my love for music really took off. Later on, when I was in high school, I started playing in the pits for the school musicals. That’s where my love for theater came from,” Ogles says. 

Ogles began doing community theater in East Tennessee. He founded a small theater company and ran his town’s arts council. Soon, he got the feeling that he wanted to explore the performing arts in a new, more diverse place. So, he came to Nashville.

A lover of all things theater, his favorite drama is “Angels In America.”

“It’s a play about every ism that exists in America, whether it’s racism or ageism or, you know, political division or anything like that,” Ogles says. “And I saw it in my early 20s. It impacted my life in a way that I can’t describe.”

The musical “Sunday in the Park with George” by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim gave Ogles and understanding of the sacrifices artists make every day. 

“It is about the passion of making art and what we give up in the process of doing so. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if no one else sees that piece of art. Sometimes you create it just for you.” Says Ogles. 

Drew Ogles sees theater as an opportunity for the audience to become inspired by the in-the-moment nature of the performances. A moment people take home with them. A moment that has lasting impact on their lives.