KC Repertory Theatre should return to its roots in the classics

There are many reasons Kansas City needs a steady supply of classical works in theater.

The classics in the performing arts give us the exquisite opportunity to glimpse the human condition under extraordinary circumstances. The classics transport us out of our everyday reality and allow us the distance of time and the perspective of diverse cultures to consider our humanity in an expanded light.

Feel-good entertainment and recycled pop culture have their place in live theater, but they are snacks compared to the profound full course meals of the classics which nourish us and help us grow to become better people and better citizens of the world.

In the 1960s, Kansas City found itself in the middle of a community discussion about the need for a repertory theater. Mayor H. Roe Bartle formed the Mayor’s Professional Theater Planning Committee, with Irvine O. Hockaday Jr. as chairman.

In 1964, Patricia McIlrath and James D. Costin joined together in a fledgeling effort, the UMKC Summer Repertory Theatre. A year later, with a vision larger than even Kansas City itself, the company was renamed the Missouri Repertory Theatre.

That vision expanded again with the Rep’s Missouri Vanguard Theatre touring company, which took professional live theater around the region starting in the late 1960s.

Dr. Mac, as those of us who knew her fondly called her, understood that a well-informed audience benefited the art form. To accomplish that, she programmed plays spanning the arc of known theater — including the classical Greeks, contemporary works and nearly everything in between.

She knew that bringing in world-class directors, designers and actors would benefit the local talent pool she was carefully cultivating at the UMKC theater department and throughout the community. Dr. Mac and Costin also found the funding to make it all happen.

The performing arts today are facing budget challenges, but Kansas City has strong examples of organizations that are able to supply a large corps de ballet and enough musicians to fill our stages. We have operas with full casts, choruses and supernumeraries.

All of these organizations mix classics from their genre with contemporary offerings. All of them find the funding, artistic staff and leadership to mount exemplary classical pieces.

We should expect no less from the leading professional theater in our region.

The most compelling need for classical theater today lies in young minds in need of education. Help these leaders and artists of tomorrow learn early on that so many of the fundamental joys and challenges in our world have already been addressed by great minds of the past.

And if classic works don’t answer every question, they absolutely move the conversation forward with profound insight and often-thrilling language.

As our many for-profit digital screens get smaller, it is incumbent on the nonprofit performing arts to cleave to the bracing wisdom of timeless works that resonate in our hearts and our minds, for all of our lives.

The need for classical theater also extends to the actors. Just as dancers need the challenge of classic ballet to maintain their technique, and musicians need Mozart and Puccini to stay at the apex of their form, so do actors need the verse of Moliere and the language of Shaw to grow and refine their craft.

There is one more vital component: our city’s media — not only to provide pre-production informational coverage, but also to share valuable criticism that helps audiences, producers, designers, directors and performing artists grow in their lifelong quest for truth.

Kansas City is at a crossroads. As the Kansas City Repertory Theatre seeks a new artistic director to replace the departing Eric Rosen, we have a thrilling opportunity for a visionary leader who will honor Dr. Mac’s founding ideals. It’s an opportunity to start a national resurgence of regional classical theater here in Missouri, in the heartland.

This story was originally published June 23, 2018 at 8:39 PM with the headline "KC Repertory Theatre should return to its roots in the classics."