Kansas City Repertory Theatre

Kansas City Repertory Theatre is a professional resident theater company serving the Kansas City metropolitan area, and is the professional theater in residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC).

The theatre has had four artistic directors: founder Dr. Patricia McIlrath guided the theater from 1964 until she retired in 1985; George Keathley was artistic director from 1985–2000; producing artistic director Peter Altman, who retired in July 2007; and the current artistic director Eric Rosen.

Appointed chairman of the University of Kansas City (now UMKC) Theatre Department and director of the University Playhouse in 1954, Patricia McIlrath created a program to provide undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to work in a professional theatre, alongside professional actors. Coinciding with the rise of Regional theater in the United States, she formed the UMKC Summer Repertory Theatre in 1964.

That same founding year, 1964, James Costin was appointed the Summer Rep‘s administrative director, creating a partnership that would continue for twenty years.

Professional actors, community players, and members of the UMKC Theatre Department, operating on a shoestring budget, worked together that first season to present the Summer Rep's two-week fledgling season. Fifteen hundred patrons attended performances of The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams and Private Lives by Noël Coward, both performing out of a quonset hut on the UMKC campus.

In 1967, the Rep became affiliated with Actors’ Equity Association, the national union of professional actors. In 1968, Dr. McIlrath launched a touring program called "Missouri Repertory Theatre," and began recruiting nationally acclaimed artists to work in this program.

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