KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Kansas City is known as a sports town-well, sports and barbecue. The city arts, on the other hand, are in a constant state of self-renewal, fueled by fickle audiences who, like swarms of thriving organisms, need what they want and want what they need - whether it is Brunhilde or Britney or Brancusi. The fine arts communities on both sides of our state line have long provided cultural sustenance at the risk of financial failure; the Harriman-Jewell Series, for example, shepherded a young tenor named Luciano Pavarotti to his world début in 1973. Our museums, galleries, theatres, conservatories, and organizations repeatedly upend the truths supposedly set forth by demographic charts that the arts are secondary and their worth only momentary: the state of the arts may always be such that the batter's score is at 3 and 2 at the top of the ninth, yet sometimes all that is needed is a pinch hit to bring the man on third base home.

When the Kansas City Repertory Theatre announced in 2007, that its new artistic director would be the thirty-something Chicagoan Eric Rosen, the search committee was gambling on youth and youth's ability to summon something stirring in an environment when every night is opening night and the show begins at the top of the ninth inning. For Rosen, who co-founded and took the reins of artistic director of About Face Theatre in Chicago in 1995, this was one more step in a direction that he has been moving since college, when he studied with the acclaimed director and Northwestern University theatre professor, Frank Galati. As his one-year anniversary at the Rep approaches, Rosen spoke about his new home and the promise he has kept to himself.

Leading the Rep is different from working in Chicago, he explained. "It's a change from being one among a relatively respectable crowd of three hundred theatres to the largest non-profit theatre in the city." When he entered into discussions with the Rep's committee he made it clear that he was only interested in work he could be "passionate about, without pandering or aiming for the squarely middle class"; that would not be "the formula for success" for him. He made a special trip to Kansas City in early 2008 to speak to the Rep's subscribers and to explain his first selections, which ranged from an avant-garde revival of The Glass Menagerie to his own musical staging of the novel Winesburg, Ohio. Initial response was positive, and he noted, "We didn't get a single letter of complaint all season. My staff tells me that never happens." Rep audiences are dynamic and alert, he noted, the same as they are at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago or at any other venue. Rosen chuckled, "There is nothing magical about going to the theatre."

Yet, in Rosen's ease in collaborating with many of the American theatre's cutting-edge artists (like Mary Zimmerman and David Cromer) and in his respect for area audiences is something, if not magical, then something equally marvelous seems to be developing: we are watching a nationally-acknowledged career come into focus. What is even more tempting to report - it is not about him. Rosen's enthusiasm came through when he discussed both fellow artists and audiences, as though he were just one of the Mickey-Rooney-Judy-Garland-hey-let's-put-on-a-show-kids, rather than a National Endowment for the Arts honoree. "It all depends on the quality of the artists," he said. "What's great is when you move aesthetically to a new place." He went on to cite his work with Mary Zimmerman on The Arabian Nights as "really renewing and a positive experience." As he discussed how he arrives at a new season-"I juggle forty plays I'd like to do in my head and the artists who I think will work. Do I have to go outside for talent? Everyone's schedule is impossible"-Rosen finally mentions his own work, not as an afterthought so much as a reasonable way of including everyone in the Rep's experience. "I want to make sure the Rep is home."

He looks for balance in a season's productions. Revivals can be fun-with Winesburg, Ohio,  "most people think they know it, but it takes training to see something more in it. It's harder to see new things; you have to gain the audience's trust. You want to make it a worthwhile experience. This season, there were challenges in things I didn't think about, like an actor's injury in The Arabian Nights, when he had to be replaced."

The Rep's two theatres, Spencer Theatre on the UMKC campus and the newer Copaken Stage in the H & R Block Building near the Power & Light District, also allow the company a balance that Rosen enjoys. For next season's M. Proust, for example, only the front half of Copaken Stage will be used. "It is a matter of "creatively tailoring these rooms." Niceness and casualness aside, Rosen is direct in his views about what theatre should be, and here he brooks no balance. "I want to work on plays that can only happen in the theatre. Too many plays I read now are like screenplays. You have to have an understanding of how theatre works. Here's what it takes to sustain the illusion-you want to create a totally different world."

In his promise to himself neither to compromise his sensibility, nor to merely entertain audiences, but to find a balance between work that is "social, moral, and intellectual," Eric Rosen believes his expectations for his first year at the Rep have been surpassed. It would be wrong to argue with success or with someone so committed to theatre of the people, by the people and for the people, yet who only calls himself "a showbiz guy."

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.