Theatre for Young America celebrates 40th anniversary

It seems the Mackey clan has given up its nomadic ways.

Gene and Sheryl Bryant Mackey, who founded Theatre for Young America 40 years ago, were certainly theater gypsies in the early days.

Before landing in Kansas City they had given L.A. a shot — their daughter, Valerie Mackey, now TYA’s artistic director, was born in Alhambra, Calif. They had been part of a children’s theater company in Fort Worth, Texas, for four years. They checked out the New York theater scene for a bit. And from there they made the drive to Kansas City with their 6-year-old daughter in a Plymouth Duster. The year was 1974.

They weren’t sure what they would find here. But they decided to stay.

“We had six dinner theaters here in Kansas City at that time,” said Sheryl Mackey, the company’s co-founder and education director. “Gene’s brother, who taught at Johnson County Community College, kept writing us and saying (KC) had six professional dinner theaters.… Why don’t you come here?”

In Fort Worth they had been part of a children’s troupe that operated under the Casa Mañana Playhouse banner. After arriving in Kansas City, the Mackeys began thinking about starting a children’s theater of their own.

“We modeled this pretty much after what they did down there,” Gene Mackey said. “It struck me back then that this is a city as big as Fort Worth and much more sophisticated and yet we didn’t have a resident professional children’s theater. But Fort Worth, where we had just come from, had one that was thriving and had been going for years.”

Sheryl scored the first theater jobs in town, landing roles in shows at the old Off Broadway Dinner Playhouse, which was located at Armour and Main, and later at the Uptown Dinner Playhouse in the Uptown Theater. That’s where she earned her Actors Equity card. She also performed in a production of “Picnic” at the former Resident Theatre at the Jewish Community Center when it was at 82nd Street and Holmes Road.

The earliest incarnation of Theatre for Young America was at the Waldo Astoria Dinner Playhouse, which was owned and operated by Richard Carrothers and Dennis Hennessy. They later founded the New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park. Gene Mackey was hired as an actor for a few shows there and became the publicist for Waldo Astoria and its sister theater, Tiffany’s Attic.

The Mackeys said the support they received from Hennessy and Carrothers was invaluable. Carrothers even designed costumes for TYA shows early on.

“After two years it was clear we were taking up more of the matinee time than (Dennis) was comfortable with, and he suggested that it was time for us to move out on our own, which it was,” Mackey said.

For six months the company performed in the Plaza Theatre, which had been converted to a movie theater on the Country Club Plaza. Then they landed in an art deco movie theater in downtown Overland Park that later became the Rio. They worked out a long-term lease with the Dickinson movie theater chain and stayed there 17 years.

A plan to renovate and expand the space was voted down by the Overland Park City Council and TYA moved on. The next stop was at Mission Mall, which was later razed. The mall’s management helped pay to renovate the space and gave them a storage area and room for a costume shop.

“That was a good location for about nine years,” Gene Mackey said.

Their next stop was another temporary home at another old Dickinson theater in Mission.

Despite all those moves, Gene Mackey said, the company never canceled a show.

“We pride ourselves on being continuous,” he said. “We’ve never missed a scheduled production.”

Finally, in 2005, TYA landed at what appears to be its permanent home — Union Station. Performing in the 200-seat H&R Block City Stage theater, a space sometimes used by other theater companies for evening performances, the Mackeys are not contemplating any more moves.

“We have an ideal office right off the backstage area,” said Valerie Mackey. “We’ve got our feet here now.” Shows are a top seller at the station.

The company’s annual budget is less than $300,000, Gene Mackey said.

“We’re very frugal,” he added.

The company has for many years performed at the Wonderscope Children’s Museum of Kansas City in Shawnee. The company has offered classes for kids virtually from the beginning.

Sheryl Mackey considers herself among the first theater education directors in Kansas City. Gene Mackey has held an adjunct faculty position at Avila University for almost 10 years. TYA performs in about 30 schools each year. All told, the company’s annual attendance is about 40,000.

Through the years an extraordinary number of actors, many of whom went on to have established careers and become familiar names to local theatergoers, paid their dues at TYA. Gary Neal Johnson, a versatile actor best known as Ebenezer Scrooge in KC Rep’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol,” was in TYA productions.

Brian Paulette and Cinnamon Schultz, both of whom appeared in the recent Kansas City Actors Theatre productions of “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” are TYA veterans. So is Jake Walker, who played Hamlet in the KCAT shows. Another is Missy Koonce, who directed the Unicorn Theatre’s recent production of “Hands on a Hardbody.”

Scott Cordes and Jennifer Mays are TYA veterans. Other alums include actor Matt Rapport, comedian Clancy Hathaway, Jeanne Beechwood (founder of Martin City Melodrama), Andi Meyer, Harvey Williams (founder of Melting Pot KC), R-rated playwright Ron Simonian, actress Jessalyn Kincaid and singer/songwriter Michael Ann Azoulai, who has forged a music career in L.A.

Don Richard, who went on to success in New York theater, is a TYA veteran, as is Broadway actress and Tony nominee Nancy Opel. The list goes on.

Theatre for Young America is one of two long-lived young-audiences companies in Kansas City. The other is the Coterie in Crown Center. For the most part, the companies serve two different audiences. TYA generally performs for a younger audience — including some kids younger than 4 — while the Coterie often goes for older kids and teens.

But when TYA moved to Union Station, the Mackeys met with Jeff Church, the Coterie’s artistic director, to avoid potential conflicts.

“There’s an audience for both of us,” Valerie Mackey said. “That was a concern, but we did go to meet with Jeff because we were going to be across the street from him. It was great. We talked about it and decided we have our separate niches.”

Looking back, Gene Mackey said the company’s ability to keep an audience through its many incarnations may be the most remarkable aspect of the theater’s history.

“We’re blessed to have a lot of our audience stay with us and follow us through all the different moves,” he said.

This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Theatre for Young America celebrates 40th anniversary."