Marcus Hummon Biography
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Marcus Hummon, a musician with his name on a string of hits over the past decade, including the Grammy Award-winning Rascal Flatts’ hit “Bless the Broken Road,” has also written five full-length musicals and an opera. While his chart-topping songs are already familiar to legions of country music fans (Sara Evans’ “Born to Fly,” The Dixie Chicks’ “Cowboy, Take Me Away,” and Tim McGraw’s “One of These Days,” to name a few more), his work for the stage is gaining increasing attention at the national level. The voice, creativity and sensibilities of a Tennessee artist is making significant contributions to both American theatre and American music.
Four of Hummons’ musicals were selected for three highly prestigious theatre events: The New York Musical Theatre Festival, The Eugene O’Neill Cabaret and Performance Conference, and The New York International Fringe Festival.
Under the direction of Michael Bush, the director of artistic production of the Manhattan Theatre Club, Warrior, Hummon’s musical about the life and times of Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, was one of the select works featured in the O’Neil Conference in August. Warrior was first produced by Nashville Actors Bridge Ensemble Theatre. The conference, at the Eugene O’Neill Center in Waterford, Connecticut, provided Hummon, among a small group of select, invited artists, with individualized attention and guidance on their work from a top-notch team of directors, artists, and musicologists with international credits.
Warrior was also honored with a slot in the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September. (He declined an invitation to showcase another one of his works in that festival, Piper. Weaving music and myths in the Celtic tradition for a story set in Boston during the wave of Irish immigration, Piper premiered at the Hartt Music Conservatory in 2004.)
Hummon’s first musical, American Duet, co-written with Actors Bridge Co-Founder Bill Feheely, was selected for New York’s International Fringe Festival, a popular showcase of the performing arts in the city in August. Feheely is the artistic director of Nashville’s Actors Bridge Ensemble Theatre, which first mounted this tale of two artists—an African-American country music singer and a white world music singer who grew up in South Africa.
Out west, Atlanta, was produced by the Geffen Playhouse in December 2007. Directed by Adrian Pasdar, best known as a film and television actor, who co-wrote the book for this musical, which is set in the final days of the Civil War, Atlanta enjoyed an extended run. The Geffen has a reputation in the L.A. theatre community for its commitment to American classics and world premieres, drawing the artistic interest and support of Steven Spielberg, Terrence McNally, and Sam Shepherd among some of America’s brightest playwrights, actors, and directors. Atlanta was first produced by Actors Bridge Ensemble Theatre in 2005.
Hummon’s Surrender Road will be included in the 2008-2009 repertory of the Lincoln Center Institute, which commissions, curates, and produces a series of live performances each year for public performances and tours to schools. The opera about a boxer and an artist whose paths dramatically cross in modern day New York City debuted in 2005 on the season of Nashville Opera.
Hummon lives in Nashville with his wife, the Reverend Becca Stevens, an Episcopalian priest serving St. Augustine’s Chapel on the Vanderbilt University campus and the founder and director of the Magdalene Project, an organization dedicated to helping prostitutes rebuild their lives. They have three children: Levi, Caney, and Moses.
