Leading Ladies

Karen Collins

The Soundtrack of Your Life

Whether singing at church or in ensembles and plays, one thing that has never left Karen Collins is her love of music. Locals may have seen her perform in various pop-ups around town or in Shane Morrow’s 2017 production of The Wiz at Chattanooga Theatre Centre, in which Collins portrayed the titular character The Wizard herself. In 2022, she was once again in search of a place where people could gather around a shared love of song. From this desire, The Velvet Chair Experience was born.

The Velvet Chair Experience is a jazz and Uptown Soul concert series that transforms the Bessie Smith Cultural Center into a Harlem Nights-inspired speakeasy, featuring Collins, house band Dexter Bell and Friends, and guest performers such as Rhythm of Love and Reece The Truth. Audience members enjoy dinner and drinks in the intimate concert hall while Collins serenades guests with songs of their own choosing. “Basically, you tell me the song you want to hear, I sit you in the velvet chair, and I sing the soundtrack of your life,” Collins shares. “What’s beautiful about it is that the people who come really shape the show by the songs that they pick. In one show, we can go from classic jazz to rock to country to gospel to spoken word.”

This immersive event draws crowds of all ages and backgrounds, offering a place for people to set aside their worries for a few hours. “That’s the reason I do it,” Collins says, “because people just want a space where they can connect.” During the show, she’s witnessed guests proposing, falling in love, or simply embracing the joy of the timeless and soulful performance.

For Collins, music is part of her personal history. In undergrad at Indiana University, she was taught by the esteemed Dr. James E. Mumford, director of the African American Choral Ensemble and the IU Soul Revue. Before that, Collins’ mother and great-grandmother encouraged her musical talents. Her great-grandmother was a shape-note singer. Shape-note singing, Collins explains, is a social style of singing in which vocalists learn to read music based on the shapes of the notes, such as triangles, squares, diamonds, or ovals.

“My great-grandmother taught that to my granny and my mom taught it to me,” she says. This rich singing tradition cultivated in Collins a deep love for music and appreciation for its unifying power. “My great-grandmother had a mezzo-soprano voice, and in my own tonality, I can remember her and even my mom singing – I can hear those same tones in my voice. It’s like carrying history.”

History is embedded in The Velvet Chair Experience, thanks in part to the show’s location at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center on MLK Boulevard, which Collins says has been a phenomenal partner to the show. In her performances, Collins hopes to transport audience members back to the moment when they first heard a song and recapture that feeling: “We say, ‘The show is tonight, but the experience is for a lifetime.’”

Neshawn Y. Calloway

Bringing Your Gifts to the Stage

For vocalist Neshawn Calloway, investing in her talents has brought her to stages throughout city and beyond. As choral director at the Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts (CCA), she is passionate about creating these same performance opportunities for her students.

Music has always been a part of Calloway’s life, beginning in church choir and high school marching band. In college, she put music on the back burner in pursuit of other courses but came to realize her heart was with musical studies all along. Following undergrad, she pursued her master’s at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) under the direction of internationally known composer and educator Dr. Roland Carter. “It was my experience at UTC working with Roland Carter that really made me want to get my certification to teach,” Calloway explains. “I fell in love with choral music and learned so much about different composers, especially Black composers, and I wanted to share that love with others.”

Calloway is now in her 24th year of teaching at CCA, where she conducts six vocal ensembles. She aims to give her students real-world performance experiences, thanks in part to the connections she has forged as a performer at festivals, concerts, and churches. Her ensembles have traveled as far as Germany and performed alongside live bands, professional choral ensembles, and more. One of her favorite aspects of teaching, she says, is watching her students become accomplished musicians. “As a middle and high school teacher, I have my students for seven years and I truly get to watch them grow personally and musically,” she says. “I want the students that come behind me to do greater things than I did.”

As a performer, Calloway has sung in events across Chattanooga, including Riverbend Festival, Nightfall concert series, the Levitt Amp series, and alongside the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera (CSO). Her first solo performance with the CSO in 2012 introduced her talents to a wider audience, and the following summer brought another unforgettable experience as she traveled to Germany to perform a jazz and blues concert.
Adding another note to her repertoire, Calloway has worked as a music director with the Chattanooga Theatre Centre and Christian Family Theater. At Chattanooga Theatre Centre, she worked on recent productions The Color Purple: The Musical and Ain’t Misbehavin’. “As a musical director,” she says, “I get to see community members that have never been on the stage come into their own as they explore different characters within a show.”

Whether performing locally or abroad, Calloway is grateful for the connections she makes through music. “I have been able to connect and work with so many amazing musicians and organizations,” she says, “I’ve also been able to advocate for the arts within the community and share my experiences as a teacher. The Chattanooga community has been very good to me as a teacher and performer and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.”

Peggy Douglas, Ph.D.

Transposing Living Stories

Dr. Peggy Douglas didn’t grow up writing plays. Her first love was poetry, which she was writing as early as five years old. In adulthood, however, she became interested in merging her written works with her passion for advocating for social change.

Douglas’ work in activism took her to the Highlander Center (formerly the Highlander Folk School), an epicenter for the Appalachian labor and Civil Rights movements. At Highlander, Douglas met Helen Matthews Lewis, the “godmother of Appalachian oral history,” Douglas explains. Through this mentorship, Helen shared many stories from up and down Appalachia with Douglas. “At some point,” Douglas says, “I thought, these stories need to be told. I could put them in a book, but I could also perform them.”

Over the years, Douglas has spoken with hundreds of individuals from diverse backgrounds, collecting their stories which she translates into plays. The characters emerge from the lived experiences of the people she meets, including miners, mill workers, farmers, people in the LGBTQ+ community, those living with mental health challenges, people who are incarcerated, and more. Among her most recent plays was After Effects: Gun Violence Survivors Speak, performed in 2024 at Barking Legs Theatre.

Regardless of theme, Douglas is keen to honor and respect the individuals who share their life stories with her. “The pedagogy I use for oral history came from Highlander. They taught me how to give all the power to the storytellers,” she says. “I just sit back and listen, sometimes for hours.” As a college professor, Douglas continues to share this tradition of oral history with her students. She is also the founder of Southern Exposure, which partners with theater company Obvious Dad in a community outreach initiative that brings historically marginalized voices to the stage.

Each play is different, inspired by the communities whose voices it represents. Douglas’ defining element throughout is using dialogue with enriching, rhythmic language. “I transpose the stories into poetic monologues, and there’s something about the poetry that I think goes straight to the heart, and so people are really drawn to it,” Douglas says. “I hold the stories up, let them be told, and people can interpret whatever they want from it.”

Rounding out her creative endeavors, Douglas is also a musician. She plays banjo and ukulele and is currently a member of the band The Ukuladies. Her love for old-time music, the blues, and folk traditions continues to influence her playwriting and the communities she connects with through her art. Ultimately, she says, “My hope is that people hear these stories and it affects them, that they might get involved in some way or another to create social change.”

Kashun Parks

Performances That Transform

The theater is a place of alchemy, where guests can walk away from a performance with a different perspective than they had going in. This magic is what keeps Kashun Parks coming back to the stage again and again.

“At the heart of it all, that’s what inspires me the most: creating work that moves people,” Parks says. “If a performance I’m part of can stir something deep within someone – bring them joy, healing, or even just a moment of reflection – then I know I’ve done what I was meant to do.”

Parks brings two decades of performing and directing experience to her work in the local theater community. As an actor, Parks has had the opportunity to portray many complex and compelling characters, such as Celia (As You Like It), Sugar (Precious Little Things), Goneril (King Lear), and Siobhan (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). She currently serves as the creative director for Next Exit Productions, developing thought-provoking performances with diverse voices to engage the Chattanooga community of artists and theater-goers.

One of her most unforgettable experiences was directing and producing The Vagina Monologues, a 1996 play centered on women’s experiences and empowerment. “It was a powerful and emotional production,” Parks recalls, “but what made it even more special was having my husband, Marvin, who is not a theater person, right by my side.” He stepped in as stage manager, supporting Parks and the crew throughout the production.

Parks adds that an audience member approached her after the show to share how impactful the performance had been. “That moment reminded me why I do this and why stories matter,” Parks says. “When theater creates a space for connection, healing, and understanding, it becomes more than just a performance; it becomes an experience that stays with people long after they leave the theater.”

As actors embody the characters they portray, they share in this transformation with the audience. The key, Parks says, is being fully in the moment. “You have to make your character real,” she says, “give them a voice, a backstory, and a life beyond the lines on the page. When you commit completely, the audience doesn’t just see a performance – they see a real person living their truth on the stage.”

Working in Chattanooga has connected Parks with her community more fully as she’s witnessed how the arts can bring people together. “I’ve always been inspired by artists who use their platforms to tell powerful, transformative stories,” she says. “Those who aren’t afraid to take risks, embrace vulnerability, and bring authenticity to their work. Whether it’s a playwright who crafts deeply human narratives, a director with a unique vision, or an actor who fully immerses themselves in a role, I’m motivated by those who make audiences feel something real.”

Holly Morse-Ellington

The Joy of Discovery

Holly Morse-Ellington’s foray into theater began later in life. As a writer, she was accustomed to creating in solitude, but in 2012, she began to do public readings of her writings. “I enjoyed the energy created during live performances, so I started writing plays and soon began acting and directing,” she explains. “In theatre we talk about the fourth wall, or this imaginary barrier between the audience and the actors. For me, live theater is an active exchange between the audience and actors that creates a dialogue everyone participates in together. I like to think we’re breaking down walls!”

Morse-Ellington plays many roles in the local performing arts community. She is a producer, director, actor, playwright, and co-founder of Next Exit Productions, where she brings a passion for uplifting local artists and contemporary voices. In 2024, she orchestrated a 10-minute play festival themed “Love Bites,” which premiered nine plays by local playwrights at Chattanooga Theatre Centre with over 60 artists involved in the production.

Following that, she produced Chattanooga’s first Fringe Festival at Barking Legs Theatre, showcasing the diverse talents of over 80 local artists. “My goal,” she says, “was to present a tapestry of live theater, puppetry, comedy, music, burlesque, and aerial artistry that celebrates our unique Chattanooga identity through our performing arts scene.” This experience opened her eyes to the breadth of talent within the region, encouraging her to find innovative ways to bridge the gap between these artists and the public.

No matter the stage, the energy created in a theatrical production is electric. Morse-Ellington especially loves the discovery in performing a play that is new to both the audience and cast members. “We get to stretch our artistry in innovative ways because we’re literally creating at every stage of the process,” she says. “I share so many belly laughs and happy tears with artists during the creative process that come from our joy in building something special together from scratch.”

One such innovative production was 50 Miles Away, a play co-written with Jason Tinney that staged characters on a road trip. They invited musicians to perform live alongside the actors – a tricky feat of timing between the dialogue and the music, but one that payed off in the end. Morse-Ellington recalls that when the actors and musicians first came together in rehearsal, the crew erupted in cheers.

With each new venture, Morse-Ellington is curious about new ways to engage with audiences. She says, “More and more, I see the impact of the work I’m part of in the arts. We’re developing neighborhood-like relationships and a sense of belonging across communities. What we’re doing in the performing arts is key to strengthening Chattanooga’s vibrant cultural landscape and identity as a hub for groundbreaking art.”