Arts Leaders Announce Theatre Alliance Kansas City

Arts leaders from the Kansas City Rep, Unicorn Theatre, Coterie Theatre, Kansas City Actors Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival have formed Theatre Alliance Kansas City, a community wide coalition, which will be dedicated to building awareness and increasing engagement with both theatre audiences and artists. The alliance will offer membership to all metro area theatres, professional, non-professional and academic. The inaugural Board of Directors includes Angela Gieras and Jason Chanos (KC Rep), Cynthia Levin (Unicorn Theatre), Joette Pelster and Jeff Church (Coterie Theatre), John Rensenhouse (KCAT) and Sidonie Garrett of HASF.

"We all want coalition which we intend to benefit the whole of our theatrical community," stated John Rensenhouse, "and we've decided to make it happen." The group is working on creating a web presence and developing membership guidelines which will help to provide structure and benefits for member theatres. "The goal is to provide one place that audience members can go to find out what shows are playing at what theatres, dates, times and ticket information. We want to build a larger audience for live theatre and find more ways to connect to a wider and more diverse audience." said Jeff Church.

Cynthia Levin noted, "Most of the theatres in this town have been working together informally for years. We now come together as a strong alliance with a collective voice to advocate for all theatre, and help market more effectively. Live theatre is one of the largest employers in the KC metro area and the impact we make on our community is crucial to the growth and well-being of our audiences."

Theatre Alliance Kansas City will increase its membership and presence within the next year. Plans include a web landing page, cross-promotion with increased exposure and creating a public celebration of all Kansas City theatre involving and including organizations, institutions and the many people who collaborate and create theatre.

"All the professional theatres, working as a group, each with their individual mission statements and programming niches has the power to create bridges between disparate communities and bring us together to examine varying worldviews." stated Jason Chanos. "We also provide professional teaching artists and theatre education programs which help students learn to think creatively giving them public opportunities for personal success. In addition they learn to work collaboratively, increase their vocabulary and gain confidence. We will work together to create a larger audience for our productions, offer a wider array of theatre education and collectively serve more people in our community than ever before." noted Sidonie Garrett.

Theatre Alliance Kansas City is a collective of professional theatres dedicated to promoting, supporting and advocating for Kansas City's theatre industry locally, regionally and nationally. Through its shared strength, it seeks to build awareness and increase engagement with both audiences and artists.

VISION: Theatre Alliance Kansas City works to energize audiences and artists with a series of programs, events and advocacy efforts. We provide resources that facilitate community building, collaborative marketing and theatre arts education. All of our initiatives seek to strengthen our theatres and grow our audiences.

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