Kansas City Rep announces its next season, with plays by a KCK native and Shakespeare
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s 2022-23 season will feature two playwrights familiar to Kansas City theater-goers: William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and Christina Anderson of Kansas City, Kansas.
Shakespeare’s tale of gender confusion, “Twelfth Night,” will lead off the Rep’s six-production season announced Thursday by artistic director Stuart Carden, with Anderson’s new “the ripple, the wave that carried me home” hitting the stage in the spring.
Carden said he had been familiar with Anderson’s work before he took over at the Rep in 2019 but didn’t know she was from the area.
“She’s a phenomenal playwright,” Carden said. “When I found out she was from KCK originally and had connections here, we sought out this play.”
“Ripple” is partially set in the fictional town of Beacon, Kansas. It has yet to make its world premiere because of pandemic postponements but is expected to do so in the fall at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California.
KC Rep produced the world premiere of Anderson’s “Man in Love” as part of the Origin KC New Works Festival in 2017. It and her many other works have been presented on stages across the country in the past two-plus decades.
Anderson, in fact, was a teenage playwright sensation in the Kansas City area before spreading her wings nationwide.
After participating in the Coterie’s Young Playwrights Roundtable as a freshman at F.L. Schlagle High School, she transferred to the private Barstow School and graduated from there. She later earned degrees at Brown University and the Yale School of Drama’s play writing program before relocating to New York City.
The Unicorn Theatre presented her musical, “Robert’s Room,” in 1999 when she was 19. Among the other local productions of Anderson’s plays have been “Breath of an American Spirit: Sacagawea” at Coterie Theatre in 2001, the world premiere of “BlackTop Sky” at the Unicorn in 2013 and KC MeltingPot Theatre’s “Hollow Roots” at Just Off Broadway Theatre in 2018.
The season will also include “Peter Pan and Wendy,” which is a reimagining of the classic tale, and the world premiere of “Flood.”
The season will also include one traditional production — “Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,” which has been a local holiday favorite for more than 40 years — and another that is becoming a tradition.
“Ghost Light: A Haunted Night of Songs and Stories From KC’s Cultural Crossroads” was created for outdoor viewing as a Halloween offering during the heart of the pandemic and proved immensely popular the past two years at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It will return in October, although the exact dates have yet to be finalized. Citing rainouts the past two years, Carden said “Ghost Light” will move indoors.
“It will be in an off-site location, not in a traditional theater,” Carden said, “a space that I’ve been describing as already having some haunted bones.”
KC Rep’s 2022-23 season
“Twelfth Night,” Sept. 6-25, Spencer Theatre: A girl disguises herself as a man to be near the count she adores in Shakespeare’s comedy of mistaken identity and unrequited love. With this production, the Rep will initiate an annual Fall Classic program that will present classic plays with a “multi-identity, multiracial perspective,” Carden said. The Rep hasn’t produced a Shakespeare play since “Romeo and Juliet” in 2013-14.
“Ghost Light: A Haunted Night of Songs and Stories From KC’s Cultural Crossroads,” October, location TBA: Conceived by Carden, this is a hybrid concert and ghost-story event that weaves together local storytellers and musicians to share frighteningly fun tales. It will go indoors this year.
“Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,” Nov. 18-Dec. 24, Spencer Theatre: The story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemptive journey with Christmas Past, Present and Future is a holiday tradition in Kansas City. This will be the 21st year that Gary Neal Johnson will play Scrooge. In partnership with UMKC Theatre.
“Flood,” Jan. 31-Feb. 19, Copaken Stage: An OriginKC world premiere by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, “Flood” was scheduled to be part KC Rep’s 2020-21 season that was wiped out by the pandemic. “I’ve been describing it as an existential comedy … about the generational divide between the boomer generation and the Gen Y/millennial generations,” Carden said.
“the ripple, the wave that carried me home,” March 14-April 2, Copaken Stage: Commissioned by Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, California, and co-produced with Goodman Theatre in Chicago, this drama’s world premiere was delayed at both venues because of COVID-19. It centers on a woman whose parents fought for the integration of public swimming pools in 1960s Kansas. This will become the second offering of the KCRep for All program (joining this spring’s “The Royale”), with free shows at community centers, public libraries and senior centers.
“Peter Pan and Wendy,” May 2-21, Spencer Theatre: In Lauren M. Gunderson’s new reimagining of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan,” Wendy Darling is a budding scientist who leaves finishing school to join Peter on their adventures with fairies, Captain Hook and the rest. It represents the debut of a KC Rep programming initiative to schedule a family-oriented production each spring.
For season ticket information, see kcrep.org or call 816-235-2700. Single tickets will go on sale July 13.
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
