KCAT Announces 2013-2014 Season

Kansas City Actors Theatre announces its 2013-2014 Season, beginning with a summer of American Masterworks.

The summer begins with a celebration of the 100th birthday of our own William Inge. To commemorate this event, KCAT will offer a production of one of his most well-loved plays, and one very appropriate to the season, Picnic.

Picnic is a charming, uplifting and heartbreaking story of one life-changing day in the lives of two households in a small Kansas town in the early 1950s. The play centers around the chemistry between two main characters: Madge Owens, a pretty 18-year-old girl, and Hal Carter, a young vagabond. Madge is coming of age, and is in the midst of an existential crisis, wondering if there is more to her life than being a pretty girl destined to marry the first acceptable man who asks. Then Hal arrives in town, and his presence has a seismic effect on Madge as well as the other members of the Owens' extended family. Hal sees in Madge a chance for an emotional attachment more deep and real than any in his shiftless life up to this point. All the characters in the play get caught up in the resulting whirlwind of passion and longing, making this a summer picnic like no other. Next, is a timeless masterwork from the towering talent of Eugene O'Neill, A Long Day's Journey into Night. A loving semi-autobiographical homage to O'Neill's family, Long Day's Journey is a harrowing, unblinking, booze and dope-fueled descent into the revelation of dark truths and bitter love. It is also a dizzying display of O'Neill's mastery of powerful dialogue, and an opportunity for virtuoso performances. An unforgettable theatrical experience, courtesy of KCAT.

After the summer, with dates and venues to be determined, the season continues with two more productions.

In our fifth co-production with the Unicorn Theatre, KCAT will present Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, which has won the Drama League Award for Distinguished Play, along with a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award.In Other Desert Cities, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence to celebrate Christmas with her family. Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history--a wound they don't want reopened. In effect, she draws a line in the sand and dares them all to cross it.

Then, in a co-production with UMKC and the WWI Museum, KCAT will present R.C. Sherriff's powerful WWI drama, Journey's End. Set in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, Aisne in 1918 towards the end of WWI, the play takes you right into the dugout of a British Army infantry company. It is an "uncompromising, cleareyed play about war--and not war as it echoes on the home front or in chambers of government, but war as a daily phonomenon for those who fight it." (Ben Brantley, New York Times). Filled with finely-drawn characters, Journey's End brings a starkly human perspective in a WWI tale that is not to be missed. KCAT's summer productions will be staged at Union Station's H&R Block City Stage beginning August 6th and running through September 15. Season subscriptions go on sale in May at www.kcactors.org or by calling the Central Ticket Office at 816.235.6222.

Kansas City Actors Theatre is celebrating its ninth season of producing classic and modern-classic plays featuring Kansas City theatre artists.

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