A powerful stage for learning: Vanderbilt and TPAC celebrate successful wrap of InsideOut events

Vanderbilt and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center concluded their 2023-2024 InsideOut series with an impactful event showcasing The Color Purple on Apr. 12. InsideOut is a free community learning program sponsored by Vanderbilt, which celebrated 21 years of partnership with TPAC in February.

Throughout the series, Vanderbilt faculty and staff engaged in panel conversations with cast, crew, directors and community members to discuss the important role of the arts in shaping our communities and personal experiences. Audience members were not only treated to these thought-provoking discussions but also enjoyed exclusive performances from each production.

Along with The Color Purple, this season of Vanderbilt's collaboration with the InsideOut series featured Indecent, Tina and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

The Color Purple
Divinity School Dean Yolanda Pierce, along with Nashville Repertory Theatre cast members Maya Antoinette Riley and Elliott Winston Robinson and Kristin Horsley, TPAC's senior director of education outreach, discussed The Color Purple's evolution from book to movie to musical and the spiritual, emotional and cultural contributions of the book's author, Alice Walker. The novel follows Celie, an African American woman in the early 20th-century South, who overcomes abuse and discrimination to find self-love and independence through the help of other resilient women in her life.