Building a Theater in Two Acts

On September 16 the Journeymen Theater Company will be the first theater group to take the stage in the newly remodeled and expanded Just Off Broadway Theater. The Journeymen are one of the many homeless theater companies in Kansas City.

This is where the Just Off Broadway Theater comes in.

“Our mission,” says Harold Kierns, President of the theater, “is to assist theater groups to do productions of a quality they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.”

In 1910, the large stone walls at 3051 Penn Valley Park housed the horse stables for the Kansas City, Missouri police dept. By the time the 90’s rolled around the space was empty and the City began to discuss turning the building into a theater. In 1996, before this idea could come to fruition, the building burnt down.

Fortunately for theaters like the Journeymen, the theater project had a strong advocate. Terry Dobson, who was the Executive Director of the Kansas City Mo Parks and Recreation Department in 1996, decided to carry out the idea of turning the address into a theater and used the insurance money to build a proper facility for this.

Along with the Parks and Recreation department the just Off Broadway Theater Association has developed a vision for the space. This vision includes “Enhancing the Kansas City arts community, while also providing flexible and adaptable space for arts organizations, artists and other community entities”

When the doors to the JOBT opened officially in 2000, the theater was a very modest site. A black box theater with no real lobby, modest bathrooms and a small ticket window made up the front of the house. There wasn’t really such a thing as backstage. The actors had a small room to get ready but no private bathrooms they had to share the ones up front with guests.

To those who love the theater like Kierns there was always something special about the place.

“We are the only theater in town with stone walls and a grassy mall.” Says Kierns

When you speak about the reason the JOBT closed its doors last August don’t make the mistake of calling it remodeling. Kierns will be quick to correct you by explaining it is actually a “completion project.”

As far as those involved with the JOBTA are concerned the project was never completed in 2000 but they had to make do with the funding that was available at the time.

10 years later, a city TIF fund has provided 900,000 dollars to the completion project and the city has kicked in another 120,000.

What will over a million dollars bring to the theater?

Kierns says that the JOBT wanted four things from the project: a bigger lobby, additional work and storage areas, a second event space and dressing rooms that met Actor’s Equity standards. All of this and the board wanted to make sure those stone walls and the grassy mall were preserved.

Once all of these changes are made, the theater is sure to have a different feel but the mission of the theater will remain .

Kierns says the JOBT wants to still provide opportunities for those theaters companies but we also want to improve the quality of what they have to work with.

One way the theater plans to do this is to change a few policies.

In the past when a theater company had rented the space they would receive the keys to the building and be in charge of everything from the first day of rehearsal to the final bow of the performance. The theater companies were responsible for box office, concessions and general cleaning and housekeeping of the facility.

The result of this policy was what Kierns calls “variations in quality”.

The completed JOBT will no longer be handed over for months at a time to visiting theater companies. Instead the theater’s board will be in charge of making sure the box office is being ran, concessions are available and the theater itself is clean and ready for show time.

In keeping with the new theater this will help to improve the quality of the productions for both the theater companies, who will no longer have to worry about these details, and for the patrons, who will receive consistency when they attend shows at the JOBT.

“What’s new,” says Kierns, “is this is a collaboration between the JOBT and the theater company.”

It seems that there are many theater companies in Kansas City who are ready to begin collaborating with JOBT. Kierns says the first four months after the theater opens are set.

The theater will be dark for another five months but when the lights finally do come back up lets hope the homeless theater companies of Kansas City find their way back to a more inviting space.

Featuring Bob Trussell

Bob Trussell first caught a glimpse of himself as an actor in 1969 when he was a theater student at the University of Texas.

How was it?

“Traumatic.”

“I realized my talents probably lay elsewhere.” Trussell dropped out of college but while his critique of himself was the end of his college days, it was just the beginning of his career.

For the last 21 years Trussell has worked as the theater critic for the Kansas City Star, a long way from the town of Kingsville, Texas where he grew up, and that traumatic experience on stage.

Trussell has no formal training as a writer, but you could say writing runs in the family.  

“My dad was a newspaper man,” Trussell says. “It was just a little small town paper, but he had all of these interests so he was a sportswriter but he was also an entertainment writer. He would write movie reviews.”

Like father like son.

Trussell didn’t set out to be a newspaper man like his dad. In fact he didn’t really set out to do anything in particular.

After marrying his wife in his hometown, the two decided a change of scenery was in order.

 “It wasn’t exactly like throwing a dart at a map,” Trussell says,” but sort of.”

That sort-of dart landed the newlyweds in Kansas City. After a string of bad jobs, a family connection got Trussell his foot in the door at the Kansas City Star.

He would be doing everything except writing.

“Originally I was a copy clerk. In those days, that meant anything. It meant you could go get copy editors coffee and cigarettes or it meant that they would have you run stuff up to the news room.”

Hard work brought him his first break and after about nine months, he became an obituary writer. To some a morbid task but not for Trussell.

“It was pretty good training for reporting, actually, because you had to make sure everything was correct.”

The training paid off and Trussell moved into yet another job title. The new position of  “news clerk” gave him his first shot at real reporting. He covered everything from local politics to law enforcement to the weather.

While he had been working all of these positions at the Star, he had also been voluntarily writing movie reviews for the arts and entertainment desk.

Again, it was Trussell’s willingness to try anything that landed him into a new position higher up on the totem pole.

“In 1984, there was an actual opening on the arts and entertainment desk,” Trussell says, “and so I became a full-fledged member of the staff up here. But for the first few years I was still doing movie reviews. For all practical purposes, I was the second string movie critic. But I would also do concerts and jazz in Kansas City and that sort of thing.”

Then came a decision that would change Trussell’s life for a long time but this decision was not his to make. Just as he had come to Kansas City and just as he had received job title after job title at the Star, Trussell stumbled into the role he has played for the last two decades.

“Butler, who had been the lead entertainment critic, decided it was all a bit too much and decided to separate the beat into movie and theater. He was given first pick — do you want to be the movie critic or do you want to be the theater critic — and he said ‘well I want to do movies’. So I became the theater critic.”

From theater student to theater critic, Trussell now found himself back in the field where he had began back in Texas.

 “One thing I like about it is that I really do like the art form,” Trussell says. “I spent years reviewing movies, and if I had to go back to that now I am not sure how enthusiastic I would be about that because as time goes by theater just seems so much more vital to me and movies seem less so than they used to, because to me there is something about sitting in the same room with these theater artists, these actors, and watching them create an illusion which usually involves extreme emotions.”

After 20 years of seeing theater in Kansas City, Trussell says he sees a change in both himself and in the theater scene.

“I used to be meaner,” Trussell says. “When I was new in the early ’90s I think people in the theater community certainly thought I was mean but something that has happened over time in that the quality of theater has gotten better and so lately it is hard for me to see bad acting. I guess if I am guilty of anything these days I am probably guilty of maybe giving people a little too much of the benefit of the doubt.”

That’s something you don’t hear every day. A critic giving the benefit of the doubt.

“As time goes by I have seen so much theater in town that I am able to put it in some kind of context and so that kind of allows me to soften the sting of my negative opinions.”

Lights Up on the Little Guys: A Short Tour of the Other Theaters in Kansas City

On any given night in Kansas City, residents have live theater at their fingertips. The opportunity to get out and experience it is as easy a making a phone call or getting on the Internet.

If you Google live theatre Kansas City, you will find links to the American Heartland Theatre, Starlight, The Coterie, The Kansas City Repertory Theater, The Unicorn and The Folly. This is a good list of the big boys in Kansas City Theater but what about the little guy?

On February 11, the Kansas City Actor’s Theatre (KCAT) and the UMKC theater department showed their first preview of “Oh What a Lovely War.” The play was staged at the Liberty Memorial World War I Museum. The museum was completed in 2006 but the JC Nichols Auditorium wasn’t finished until late last year.

The Auditorium can seat 230 in the plush red velvet seats. The rows are wide and audience members have plenty of room to stretch their legs and enjoy the performance. The set for “Oh What A Lovely War” was minimal but the atmosphere of the auditorium is enough to draw you in. The show made good use of the auditorium’s amenities. A large movie screen mounted on the light wood walls was used to display images of the World War I era “Oh What a Lovely War” was portraying. The large isles allowed cast members to run through the audience and interact.

The show was good and the space really played a part in that so what’s next?

"This is the first live theatre performance we have had but I think just with the success of this one we will probably do it again." Said Megan Spilker, a representative of the museum.

This is not the only little gem Kansas City has to offer. Kansas City has lots of spaces that are new or just a bit off of the beaten path.

One space that falls in this category is the Fishtank performance space, located in the crossroads district. The Fishtank’s small black box theater doesn’t offer the comfy seats or the capacity of the J.C Nichols auditorium but it finds its own greatness in the intimate feel it provides and its unique mission.

This mission is described on The Fishtank’s blog: “The Fishtank Performance Studio develops work from concept to concert by providing a low-risk, low-cost environment that nurtures new works and inspires theatrical entrepreneurship.” Local actress Heidi Van curates the space and uses the Fishtank to house her theater company, Hybrid. In addition to plays, the Fishtank regularly features improvisational comedy troupes and local performance artists.

If you travel two miles down the road to 3051 Penn Valley Drive you will find yourself in front of the large stone walls surrounding The Just Off Broadway Theatre. Like the Fishtank, JOBT tries to cultivate new artists in the Kansas City area by hosting more than 40 different theater companies who in addition to published works have also developed a considerable number of new scripts.

The Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department owns the theater, which opened in 2000. Under new management, the theater closed last August to receive a much-needed facelift. When the doors reopen in April there will be a new lobby and, in addition to the already existing black box theater, there will be a new performance space.

There is always something exciting about finding a new place and seeing what they have to offer. What Kansas City has behind her curtains may surprise you.

The Buzzing in the Back: What Not To Do When You Are At The Theatre

After sloshing through the snow and ice, I was relieved when I stepped into the little brown brick building at 3828 Main in Kansas City on Wednesday February 9. Once inside, I was excited and pleased with my decision to brave the elements to see the newest production the Unicorn Theatre had staged. The play written by Sarah Ruhl is titled “In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play”. If you are wondering what the play is about, trust your instincts on this one. As my friend Rhiannon and I stood in the lobby before the show, we discussed the historical elements of the play.  As it turns out in the 19^th century women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” were treated by doctors using a technique they called pelvic massage. “In The Next Room” takes place during the infancy of electricity when people were discovering all the new ways this invention could change their lives. For doctors treating hysterical women, electricity offered a solution to the tedious task of pelvic massage. Cue vibrator, the unbilled actor in this dramedy.

            While waiting for the lights to dim, I spent some time taking in the theater and making note of who was in the audience. It had been awhile since I had been to the Unicorn but it appeared their audiences still mostly consisted of an older white demographic. I wondered how an older crowd would receive the risqué subject matter. I got my answer at the end of the first act and it came loud and clear. As the lights went down signaling applause from the audience, I heard a ridiculous amount of commotion in the back of the theater. Mixed in the polite clapping came a mix of WOOHOOOOOS and OWWW OWWWWs from a poofy haired woman who looked to be in her mid to late 50s.  Throughout the second act the noise from the back only got worse. The laughter rose to a level that became distracting to me and certainly to the people shying away from the big haired offender. Then when laughter wasn’t enough to show her approval, she started interjecting her own commentary. With every “uhh Hello” and “Uh-oh” she let out I became more detached from the story unfolding on stage.

            After the play, I started thinking about theater etiquette.  I couldn’t understand how people attending the theatre could be so out of touch with what is acceptable behavior. I refuse to believe someone would behave in a way knowing it would negatively impact others, so I came to the conclusion that it had to be that they didn’t know the rules. So here they are:

1.     Turn off your phones (this means off not vibrate)

2.     Don’t unwrap candy during the show.

3.     Do laugh when something is funny but no need to overdo it

4.     Show up on time and be in your seats prior to curtain.

5.     Don’t talk during the show…Duh

6.     We all know theatre seats are not always the most comfortable but try to refrain fidgeting and squirming in your seat.

7.     If you don’t know when it is appropriate to clap, follow the lead of the rest of the audience.

            The rules are simple, but if you are ever in doubt my rule is to always be considerate of others. So if you don’t know whether you should shout out your opinion in the middle of the show, first think about whether the person next to you cares (they probably don’t), then think about the actors on stage and whether your take on the story is going to distract them from telling it to the rest of us (it probably will). Opinions are best expressed after the show because part of the fun of going to the theatre is hearing what everyone thought about the show. Going to the theater is always fun even when the show isn’t, but it only takes one loud person in the back row to ruin it for everyone else.