Photo Flash: CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION Opens at KC Rep

Annie Baker's Obie Award-winning Circle Mirror Transformation opens Friday at Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Copaken Stage. Kyle Hatley directs.

Baker's five-character comedy delivers an emotional punch when five people sign up for an acting class, each having his or her own expectations. Through a series of theatre games and exercises, they begin to unpeel the layers of their everyday lives and learn far more than they bargained for about each other and themselves.

Baker is one of American theatre's most sought-after young playwrights. Her works have twice been lauded as Best New American Play, in 2009 for Circle Mirror Transformation, and again in 2010 for The Aliens. Circle Mirror Transformation premiered in 2009 at Playwrights Horizons in New York and immediately received outstanding reviews and top honors, including the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play.

It also was selected one of the top ten plays of 2009 by The New York Times, Time Out New York and The New Yorker. Hatley, who also serves as the Rep's associate artistic director, previously directed the theatre'sproductions of A Christmas Carol, Broke-ology and The Borderland, and served as assistant director of Saved-directed by Gary Griffin, Into the Woods-directed by Moisés Kaufman, and the 2009 world premiere of A Christmas Story, The Musical!-directed by the Rep's artistic director Eric Rosen. Since arriving in Kansas City in 2007, Hatley has also taken an active role in the Kansas City Fringe Festival, for which he has written and directed Head, Watering the Grave, Six and The Death of Cupid. Most recently he created and directed a new series for Chatterbox Audio Theater called The Human Experience.

www.chatterboxtheater.org

The cast for Circle Mirror Transformation includes Tom Aulino as Schultz (Mary Zimmerman's Candide at Chicago's Goodman Theatre; Theatre District, Take Me Out for About Face/Steppenwolf-Jefferson Circle begins with Kim Stauffer (far left), Lee Roy Rogers, Tom Aulino, Mark Robbins, Izzie Baldwin (back to camera). Photo: Don IpockAward; Broadway revival of On the Town); Izzie Baldwin, as Lauren (Saved-KC Rep, Light in the Piazza, South Pacific-Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre); Mark Robbins as James (A Christmas Carol, Bus Stop, Gary Griffin's A Flea in her Ear-KC Rep) Lee Roy Rogers as Marty (When the Rain Stops Falling-Lincoln Center; Orson's Shadow-New York's The Public Theatre/Barrow Street), the film Road to Perdition) and Kim Stauffer as Theresa (Much Ado about Nothing, Mary Stuart-New York Classical Theatre).

The creative team includes Meghan Raham (Set Design), Megan Turek (Costume Design), Jeffrey Cady (Lighting and Projection Design), Michael Griggs (Sound Design), Jess Akin (Assistant Director) and Seif Cristobal (Assistant Lighting and Projections Designer). Production Stage Manager is Mary R. Honour.

Company biographies are posted at www.KCRep.org

Photo credit:  Don Ipock