KCAT also has a peripatetic presence in the community. While the company regularly mounts productions each year at a conventional performance venue in Union Station, they likewise rely on found spaces throughout greater Kansas City. These sites are selected to environmentally facilitate a given drama, as evidenced by a pair of offerings from the current season. Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, a play that consists of a triad of wakes, was produced at a local funeral home. And Journey’s End, a poignant indictment of World War I, was produced on the grounds of a signature landmark, theNational World War I Museum. Both the funeral home and the WWI Museum were rented to the company at significantly reduced rates. These alternative performance spaces served the joint purpose of cutting production costs, and, to quote Rensenhouse, “embed the company even more fully in the community.”

As its name suggests, Kansas City Actors Theatre is dedicated to fostering the talents of local theatre artists, especially actors. According to Rensenhouse, 60 percent of the collective’s $425,000 operating budget goes directly to artists, primarily to the actors. “We want to pay actors a living wage to do our part to keep them working and remaining in Kansas City,” he says. In recent seasons, Kansas City’s eight other professional theatres, most notably Kansas City Repertory Theatre, have also increased their local hiring. One might suggest that they have been inspired by KCAT’s approach.

The company has amassed a $100,000 endowment, a substantial feat for a theatre of its size and operating budget; not surprisingly, these funds came mainly from local donors. Actors Theatre’s recent Long Day’s Journey into Night was recognized by the Kansas City Star as the best theatrical production in Kansas City for 2013. These successes attest to KCAT’s singular ability to make collectivity work in an arts environment obsessed with competition—and, in the process, to vigorously serve its community of actors and audiences alike.

Peter Zazzali has a Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center and is an assistant professor in the theatre department at the University of Kansas.