EVANS DONNELL was bitten by the theater bug while attending a play in Nashville more than 30 years ago, and he's happy he never got over it.

He's been an actor, first in community theater and then on the professional stage, where he was honored to earn his Actors' Equity Association card. He's done everything from musicals and modern dramas to Shakespeare and Shaw during his time on the boards.

Evans also performed on camera in television shows such as UNSOLVED MYSTERIES (earning his Screen Actors Guild card on an episode of that series) and in films such as THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLYNT and FALSE PROPHETS. He has been a member of the guild's Nashville Branch Council and served on various national Screen Actors Guild committees.

He founded AthensSouth Theatre in 1997, and produced or directed shows for that group until its demise in 2001.

Evans has an extensive journalism background too, having worked in full-time or part-time capacities for various media outlets since 1985. He formerly covered politics, education, the legal system and sports.

In October 2002, he was very happy to begin reviewing theater for The Tennessean when Kevin Nance, then the paper's theater and dance writer, gave him the opportunity to write about his favorite subject. He has also reviewed the Nashville Symphony and the Nashville Opera for the paper. In January 2006, Evans became a correspondent for Back Stage as well.

Evans was a critic-fellow for the 2004 O'Neill Critics Institute. He attended the program at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut under the Clara Hieronymus Scholarship. The OCI is annually directed by former Los Angeles Times chief theater critic Dan Sullivan and was conducted in July during the center's 40th anniversary playwrights' conference.

He was also a fellow for the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater at the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles from January 9-20, 2006. That program is led by author, critic and USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship Program founding director Sasha Anawalt.

Evans is proud to be a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, which was founded at the O'Neill Theater Center in 1974. He is a past chairman of its communications committee.

In 2007 Evans took a leave of absence from reviewing to be the media director/scheduler for former Nashville Vice Mayor Howard Gentry's campaign for mayor. He later briefly worked as Gentry's assistant when Gentry became the CEO of the Public Benefit Foundation of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce in the fall of that year.

He holds bachelor and master degrees in business administration, and has operated his own small business, Donnell Enterprises, for the past 13 years.

Evans has been married since 1994 to the lovely Ann Stathos of Mountain Brook, Alabama. They and their beautiful nine-year-old daughter Katie reside with two cats and a dog near the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville, Tennessee. Evans' e-mail is evans@stagecritic.com.