KANSAS CITY, MO: Kansas City Repertory Theatre has announced its 2017-18 season, which will include two award-winning shows, a world premiere, and a holiday classic.
“These plays and musicals celebrate the exhilarating scope of storytelling and the brave and bold themes that have marked our theatre company since 1964,” said artistic director Eric Rosen in a statement. “They are immediate, important, ingenious, highly entertaining, and very much speak to this moment in time.”
Starting out the season will be the world premiere of Between the Lines, with music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson and book by Timothy Allen McDonald. Based on the book by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer, this fantastical musical follows middle school outsider Delilah on a journey through her literary fantasy world.
Next will be Fences, by August Wilson. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, this drama tells the story of an African-American father and son as they navigate their dreams for a better future.
For the holidays, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol comes to life onstage in Barbara Field’s adaptation. A KCRep staple, this show tells the classic tale of grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited in one night by three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.
In the new year, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, based on the best-selling book by Mark Haddon and adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens, will bow at the theatre. A 15-year-old boy possesses immense intellectual abilities but has difficulty navigating everyday life, and the play follows him on a quest to find out who killed his neighbor’s dog.
Next will be Sex with Strangers, by Laura Eason, a modern love story about a novelist and a blogger who find love in a remote B&B, exploring the line between public and private lives in our media-driven world.
Brother Toad, a new play by Nathan Louis Jackson, will follow in the spring of 2018. The show addresses topical debates on gun violence specifically in Kansas City.
The next show will be Welcome to Fear City, by Kara Lee Corthron. The show is set in the 1970s in the South Bronx at the beginning of the hip-hop revolution.
In addition to the listed shows, another holiday show and a spring musical will be announced at a later date. In addition, OriginKC: New Works Festival will be presented in the spring.
Founded in 1964, KCRep cultivates regional passion for the arts, dedicated to fostering the community through entertainment and education.
