A Brief History of the THEATRE GYM

The Theatre Gym started in 2006 as a theatre school. We held acting and directing classes at various locations on both sides of the border for a few years before putting the educational arm of the organization on hiatus. We will start up acting, directing, and playwriting classes again in late 2012. TTG will also expand the age-range of classes to include pre-teen and teenage young people.

The intention had always been to create a multi-faceted theatrical organization—to produce professional and Equity productions and to host events and workshops. We’re planning a Feldencrais Method® workshop and probably a stage combat intensive, a stage management workshop, and a makeup/hair workshop. TTG has been in discussion with local Kansas City libraries to present Professional Actors Reading Novels(PARN), a program that should start in 2012.

In May of 2009 we incorporated not-for-profit and presented the Midwest première of Keith Bunin’s The Busy World is Hushed as a professional production at St. Mary’s Church in downtown Kansas City. In November of 2009, The Theatre Gym presented a professional production of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, also at St. Mary’s. This production was ranked as one of the Top 10 Professional Productions in Kansas City for 2009 by KC Stage Magazine.

For its third public presentation, The Theatre Gym produced the world première of DUTY by Hal Parrott in September 2010 with Allan L. Boardman. We followed this with a return engagement in November and another in February 2011 at Off Center Theatre in Crown Center.

Additionally in the fall of 2011 The Theatre Gym presented the area première of UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL by Greg Berger with Kevin Fewell. We will tour that locally and regionally during 2012.

For the holiday season in 2011 TTG presents the regional première of the hilarious farce KEN LUDWIG’S THE FOX ON THE FAIRWAY at the newly re-opened Just Off Broadway.

We also plan to present eight more productions in 2012 and early 2013: The Lion in Winter by James Goldman; Exhibit This! by Luigi Jannuzzi; If-Then Scenario, a New ROMANTIC Comedy by Denn Dey; Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!; The Tempest by William Shakespeare; Man of La Mancha; and Desolation Place: A Blake Marlowe Mystery and Stavrogin’s Confession (for the KC Fringe Festival 2012), both by New York playright-actor-director-teacher John Regis.