Rosen Heads to KC Rep

BY Jonathan Abarbanel

Eric Rosen

Eric Rosen, artistic director of About Face Theatre, will leave before the end of this season the company he co-founded to become artistic director of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, one of the nation’s largest regional companies. He is expected to take up his post at the Rep in the spring, after staging Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed at About Face as previously announced. The Chicago premiere of the Broadway comedy opens Jan, 19 at the Center on Halsted with Mary Beth Fisher and Lea Coco headlining the four-person cast.

Rosen, 37, co-founded About Face with Kyle Hall in 1995 as a troupe to focus on themes of gender and sexual identity. Under Rosen, About Face has achieved a national profile through its own work, much of it original and self-developed, and through its co-ventures with other theatre companies that resulted in such national successes as Clay, Winesburg, Ohio and I Am My Own Wife, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award.

Rosen individually has extended his career to one of national scope in his several capacities as director, dramaturge and producer at venues as diverse as the Prince Music Theatre, the Arden Theatre, Playwrights Horizons and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. He’s already directed Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful and Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses at the Kansas City Rep. Rosen holds a doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University, where he met About Face co-founder Hall.

The possibility of collaboration between About Face and the Kansas City Rep (KCRep) already is on the table, according to the Nov. 6 press release announcing Rosen’s move. It’s not, on the surface, a marriage made in heaven, as the KCRep is not known either for developing new work or for alternative themes. Its 2007-2008 season includes Theresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates, John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, A Christmas Carol, the Chris Sergel stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, Elizabeth Gregory Wilder’s Gee’s Bend and The Drawer Boy, plus a holiday-season presentation built around the music of John Denver.

On the other hand, the LORT company has been around for 44 years, boasts a FY2008 budget of $6.5 million and has both solid corporate support and over 10,000 subscribers. Originally called the Missouri Repertory Theatre, the company changed its name three years ago. Shows are produced in the 630-seat Spenser Theatre on the campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and in the brand-new 320-seat Copaken Theatre in gentrifying downtown Kansas City. The Copaken Theatre, which opened last February, is a facility of over 12,000 square feet within the world headquarters of H & R Block. Just last month, the KC Rep board announced successful completion of a two-year $7 million capital campaign to build the Copaken and increase the KCRep’s endowment fund.

KCRep media relations spokesperson Laura Muir acknowledged that Rosen’s appointment signals a new direction for the company, at least in part. “We are interested in new work. We are interested in expanding our audience base and drawing a younger audience and Eric will help us do that,” she said. On the other hand, she said the post will offer Rosen the opportunity to stage the classics and standard repertory selections which he can’t do at About Face, given the troupe’s mission. Muir also pointed out that the budget of the KCRep and the size of its facilities offer Rosen opportunities to direct on a larger scale.

Rosen himself confirmed Muir’s observations, saying he’s often thought about running a large, institutional company. “One of the things I’ve been hired to do is build a new works program for Kansas City. Let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of playwrights running around Kansas City. It’s been a director’s theatre, and I hope to change that.”

Rosen also spoke of the prospects for the new Copaken Theatre in the revived downtown Power and Light District. “There’s the potential for a lot of vitality there,” he said. “When do you get a chance to go run a new theatre that’s already built and paid for but doesn’t have any programming?”

About Face will conduct a national search for a successor to Rosen, although the troupe’s board already has announced that he will return on a regular basis to Chicago to develop new work and direct at About Face. That’s understandable from the perspective of the company’s history and record of success, but nonetheless it’s a large “given” for an incoming artistic leader to accept. It might be difficult to escape the long shadow of the founding artistic director if the shadow still is there.