ORIGINKC: New Works Festival Weekend Slated for This Weekend

Kansas City Repertory Theatre announces the Third Annual OriginKC: NEW WORKS FESTIVAL WEEKEND, this Friday and Saturday, May 11 and 12, 2018 as part of its umbrella New Works Festival.

Entering its third season, the OriginKC: NEW WORKS FESTIVAL, running April 27 through May 27, 2018, positions Kansas City as a major player and national center for the cultivation and production of new works, while offering theatre artists from across the country the financial, creative and artistic resources required to develop vital, diverse works of theatre.

The Festival Weekend, May 11 and 12, brings together VIPs from the national theatre community for an intensive two days of staged readings, workshops, panel discussions and parties that are mostly all free and open to the public.

This year's New Works Festival Weekend VIPs include Teresa Eyring (Executive Director, Theatre Communications Group), Meredith McDonough (Associate Artistic Director, Actors Theatre of Louisville). Natasha Sinha (Associate Artistic Director, LCT3) and D. Soyini Madison (Professor of Performance Studies, Northwestern University), as well as local Kansas City arts leaders Jeff Church (Producing Artistic Director, Coterie Theatre) and Nicole Hodges Persley (Associate Artistic Director, KC MeltingPot Theatre).

In addition to the New Works Festival Weekend activities, the New Works Festival continues through May 27th with BROTHER TOAD and WELCOME TO FEAR CITY performing in rotating repertory. Kansas City audiences have the unique opportunity to engage in the process of creating theater while giving emerging and established writers the resources to develop plays for future seasons at both KCRep and beyond.

The OriginKC: New Works Festival is curated and produced by KCRep Associate Artistic Director/Director of New Works, Marissa Wolf under the leadership of Artistic Director Eric Rosen. "The New Works Festival, and the Festival Weekend in particular, is my favorite time of year, when audiences come together to experience incendiary, breathtaking productions that spark illuminating dialogue after every show in our Community Conversation series," explains Wolf.

For the 2017/18 OriginKC: New Works season, KCRep is proud to produce the WORLD PREMIERE of BROTHER TOAD, a new play by Kansas City, KS native, Nathan Louis Jackson and directed by Melissa Crespo. In Brother Toad, Jackson, KCRep's Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence, asks us to bear witness to the humanity behind the choices we make regarding guns and family in our City's African American community.

In rotating repertory with Brother Toad is the REGIONAL PREMIERE of WELCOME TO FEAR CITY by Kara Lee Corthron, directed by KCRep Assistant Artistic Director, Chip Miller. In this electrifying and alive story, a South Bronx boy searches for his poetic voice and wrestles with his identity as his neighborhood struggles to survive in the wake of the 1977 New York City blackout. This fierce, hot, and funny account also looks at the epicenter of the American hip-hop revolution.

Also being produced under the umbrella of KCRep's New Works Festival is the workshop production of LETTERS FROM FREEDOM SUMMER, by Ricardo Khan, Denise Nicholas, and Sibusiso Mamba. FREEDOM SUMMER will be directed by Khan as well.

In the charged summer of 1964, college students from across the U.S. came together to fight for voting rights in Mississippi, a state known for intimidating and terrorizing Black Americans out of their right to vote. Letters from Freedom Summer celebrates the courage and resilience of the young people who changed the fate of this nation.

Two additional new plays are also selected each season to be read as part of the Festival Weekend's free public readings. On Saturday, May 12 at 10:00 am, playwright Dipika Guha's work UNRELIABLE will be performed, followed later in the day after several ancillary New Works events, by a 4:30 pm reading of FRIDA...A SELF PORTRAIT written by Fox Foundation Resident Actress, Vanessa Severo.

The OriginKC: NEW WORKS FESTIVAL is made possible with support from the Copaken Family Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, H&R Block, and the City of Kansas City, MO Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund. KCRep is underwritten in part by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Performances for Brother Toad and Welcome to Fear City began Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28th respectively and run in repertory through Sunday, May 27 at Copaken Stage.

LETTERS FROM FREEDOM SUMMER performances begin Friday, May 4 and run through Sunday, May 13 at Spencer Theatre on the UMKC campus. Press night for this production is scheduled for Wednesday, May 9 at 7:00 pm. Letters From Freedom Summer is a production of the UMKC Department of Theatre in partnership with Kansas City Repertory Theatre and is supported in part by the Hall Family Foundation Theatre Enhancement Fund. Press night for this production is scheduled for Wednesday, May 9 at 7:00 pm.

Tickets may be purchased at http://kcrep.org/new-works-2016 by calling 816-235-2700. For group ticket sales, please call Andrew at 816-235-6122.

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