KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

For complete Theatre listings through 2011, click here to visit the KC Events calendar.

The Coterie Theatre
The Bridge to Terabithia
Runs January 18 through February 27
For tickets call 816-474-6552 or online at www.coterietheatre.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

This powerful production focuses the humor, warmth, and emotional intensity of Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award winning novel. Jesse, a budding artist who feels separate from his family and rural Virginia culture, dreams of becoming something special. Leslie, the new girl from the city and the ultimate outsider, opens up a world of imagination, art, and literature for him. Together they create Terabithia, a fantasy kingdom where they are safe from those who don't understand them. Their friendship grows as Jesse's world expands. When tragedy strikes, the strength gained in Terabithia lets Jesse move forward on his own, and lets him share the magic of his dreams.  

 Click here to read the KCM review

Kansas City Actors Theatre
Oh What A Lovely War
Runs February 11 through February 27
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at www.kcactors.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

In a unique collaboration between the National WWI Museum, UMKC Theatre and the Kansas City Actors Theatre, we bring you one of the 20^th century’s theatrical masterpieces. A carnival of song, battle and heartbreak as the war to end all wars blazes its way on to the stage at America’s national museum dedicated to that war.

Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
The Piano Lesson
Runs February 17 through March 6 at MET Space
For tickets call 816-569-3226 or online at www.metkc.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is the 1930s entry to the playwright’s 20^th-century play cycle. A bitter family history, born in slavery, is carved into the wood of a piano. For Berniece, the piano is a shrine, a monument to her family’s painful past. For her brother, Boy Willie, it’s a new beginning

Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Circle Mirror Transformation
Runs February 18 through March 20
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Acclaimed as the debut of the year by one of the most exciting new writers in the country, Circle Mirror Transformation is a touching new comedy about the most unlikely of stories. Five citizens of a rural town begin a community acting class, each with his/her own expectations, but soon learn more about each other and themselves than they bargained for. Hailed as one of the most insightful and original new works of the year, the Rep is proud to present the Kansas City premiere of a play that explores the transforming powers of creativity.

For complete Theatre listings through 2011, click here to visit the KC Events calendar.

By Victor Wishna

Senior Editor, Theatre; Theatre and Features Contributor
Victor Wishna is a writer, editor, and author, among other things. A graduate of Stanford University and the New School's creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. He contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally.

With photographer Ken Collins, he published In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights (Umbrage Editions, 2006), for which he conducted and edited interviews with 61 prominent stage writers including Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and many others. The book won a 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal (www.intheircompany.com).

He has always maintained a love for theatre, as a writer, an audience member, and even an actor, appearing in several community and semi-professional productions. As an undergraduate, he studied acting and playwriting with Anna Deavere Smith, in addition to journalism and psychology (and not engineering or medicine).

After nearly 12 years in New York City, Victor recently returned to his hometown with his wife, Annie, also a K.C. native. When not writing for publication or pleasure, Victor is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest, and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week. Seriously.