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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

The Coterie Theatre
Crown Center, 2450 Grand Blvd., Suite 144, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-474-6552 or online at www.coterietheatre.org. 

The Coterie Theatre challenges the New Year with its interactive and issues-driven production of former playwright-in-residence Laurie Brooks’s The Wrestling Season (Jan. 24–Feb. 19 at the Coterie), which plays out high-school rumors on the wrestling mat and provokes audiences into a post-performance discussion. Freedom Sisters: Stamping, Shouting, Singing Home, about a girl in the 1950s Deep South who discovers her great-great-great grandmother is Sojourner Truth, opens on the main stage Feb. 22–26 and Mar. 2–4, following a February school tour. For younger theatergoers and musical lovers, Lucky Duck (March 6–8 at the Folly Theater) is a modern twist on the traditional Ugly Duckling tale. Finally, avid readers are sure to appreciate David Wood’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach (Apr. 10–May 18), rounding out the Coterie’s spring program with a boy and his fantastical journey.

Martin City Melodrama & Vaudeville Co.
9601 Metcalf Avenue, Overland Park, KS 
For tickets call 913-642-7576 or online at www.martincitymelodrama.org. 

If you liked Martin City Melodrama’s quirky Christmas fare, check out Martin City, Jr.’s spring production Rumpelstiltskin…Recycled!?! (Feb. 23–May 10). Set in the country of Wastealot, the play twists this well-known fairy tale into a funny but serious lesson about protecting the environment.

Paul Mesner Puppets
Paul Mesner Puppet Studio
1006 E. Linwood Boulevard, Kansas City, MO
Liberty Performing Arts Center
1600 S. Withers Road, Liberty, MO
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at www.paulmesnerpuppets.org.

Paul Mesner’s world of puppetry guarantees a fairy-tale-filled spring and begins with Strega Nona (Jan. 25–Feb. 19 at the Puppet Studio), an Italian tale in which Strega Nona entrusts her magic pasta pot to someone else and returns to find the whole town covered in pasta. The company will be on tour in Liberty, Mo., with its “rollicking adventure” Puss in Boots (Feb. 22 at Liberty Performing Arts Center), in which a son inherits his father’s cat, who promises wealth in exchange for boots. A veggie-themed Rapunzel graces the studio again Mar. 7–Apr. 1, and then the puppets head back to Liberty on Apr. 4 for Saint George and the Dragon, a tale in which a fiery heroine proves she’s destined to be more than a housewife and becomes the hero.

Starlight Theatre
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-363-STAR or online at www.kcstarlight.com. 

Already wonderfully highlighted in our musical theatre preview, the Starlight Theatre presents Disney’s Aladdin (Feb. 1–5) and Narnia, The Musical (Apr. 6–8), both at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Theatre for Young America
Union Station, Suite 800, 30 West Pershing Road, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816 460-2083 or online at www.tya.org.

Some of the spring’s simultaneously strangest and most lesson-oriented offerings will be put on by Theatre for Young America. In Bully Bot the Robot and the Gang of Geeks (Jan. 17–26) victims and bullies alike use robots to experiment with human behavior to try to solve the problem of bullying. Black Cowboy in the Old West (Feb. 18–25) is folk singer Danny Cox and artistic director Gene Mackey’s new musical theatre production about black cowboys in the U.S., set in the late 1800s. The Kansas City premiere of Joan Cushing’s new work Diary of a Worm, a Spider, and a Fly (Mar. 6–Apr. 14), based on the books of Doreen Cronin and promoting recycling, eco-consciousness, and the earth sciences, will be followed by returning selection Pinocchio Commedia (Apr. 24–May 19), about a wooden puppet who strives to become a real boy, all done in historical commedia dell’arte style with masks.

Top Photo: Paul Mesner Puppets' Strega Nona

By Jessica Showers

Theatre Contributor

Jessica Showers, a long-time believer in the collaborative power of the performing arts, is a Midwest native and Kansas City-based arts journalist. She is on the editorial board for The Sondheim Review, a quarterly magazine dedicated to the work of renowned composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Jessica received a master's degree in arts journalism with a focus in theatre from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. As part of her graduate coursework, Jessica partnered with Charleston, S.C.'s daily paper The Post and Courier to cover theatre at Spoleto Festival USA. She also interned in New York City for American Theatre magazine and for Syracuse Stage, Syracuse, N.Y.'s local LORT theatre organization. Jessica looks forward to delving into Kansas City's wealth of theatricality and sharing it with KCM's readers.