Theatre Season 20-21

McPherson College theatre is changing a 40-year tradition.

“This year is not about upholding traditions. This year is all about adaptation,” Jd. Bowman, professor of theatre at McPherson College, said. “What does theatre look like in the era of self-quarantine and safety precautions?” Read full release on 20-21 season.

Support our 2020-2021 Season

It’s more important than ever this year for the support of our patrons. We face new challenges bringing our shows online, but the costs of producing live theatre remain. We cannot meet those challenges and celebrate our success without you.

By donating any amount to the McPherson College Theatre Department, you will be joining over forty years of season subscriber heritage for this unique season. For all of our patrons who donate, we plan to offer access to our online performances, zoom celebrations, season updates and, when it is safe, an opportunity to reserve tickets to be in our audience.

This is your chance to connect with our students in educational theatre and a chance to support them in our new endeavors. Even a gift of $20 will do so much for us to offer a season during a global pandemic.

Click here to be taken to our Make a Gift page, select the Theatre designation, and provide your details for us. A follow up email will arrive to your inbox as we receive that information. Feel free to contact us with any questions at our Box Office at (620) 242-2444 or [email protected]

Productions

Homecoming: 20/20 Vision

By McPherson College Alumni & Students
October 1-4, 2020

An exclusive look at the department’s past, present and future when alumni and students share monologues, songs, and personal stories about McPherson College Theatre. In this unique covid-inspired collection, we’re treated to videos dealing with topics from love & hope to isolation & how things used to be.

Unique Fact: Artists contributing to this project span the past 4 decades of theatre at McPherson College!

Molly Sweeney

By Brian Friel
November, 2020

Brian Friel has been recognized as Ireland’s greatest living playwright. In this play, Friel explores how stories are filtered through the ones who tell it. Molly, her husband Frank, and her doctor Mr. Rice all explain Molly’s strange journey to reclaim lost sight. Based on Oliver Sacks’ case history “To See or Not To See,” the story is also reminiscent of “The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Fun Fact: McPherson College was the location of the Kansas premiere of this play in the spring of 1997. It starred Heather Healy, Michael Bisceglia III, and Dr. Rick Tyler. It was directed by then-student Jd. Bowman.

Dutchman

By Amiri Baraka
January, 2021

This 1960s play comes to McPherson College. Set in a New York City subway car, the play introduces us to Clay, a young middle-class black man, and to Lula, the young white woman who tries to seduce him. Dutchman presents the stylized encounter as an illustration of the political and psychological conflicts facing Black men in the 1960s.

Teaching Fact: Dutchman is one of the canonized plays taught in theatre programs around the country. It is seen as one of the important works on race in 1960s America.

Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic

By Matt Cox
March 2021

For seven years a certain boy wizard went to Wizard School. This, however, is not his story. This is the story of The Puffs who just happened to be there too. PUFFS gives you a new look at a familiar adventure from the perspective of three new heroes just trying to make it through wizard school. This is a play for anyone who was never destined to save the world. It’s a feel-good play enjoyed by everyone – regardless of house or fandom.

Legal Fact: Puffs is a stage play written by Matt Cox as a transformative & transfigured work under the magic that is US Fair Use laws. Puffs is not authorized, sanctioned, licensed or endorsed by J.K Rowling.

Native Gardens

By Karen Zacarias
April, 2021

Good fences make good neighbors …right? This hilarious hot-button comedy follows two sets of couples who live beside each other in a lush, historic D.C. neighborhood. Doctoral candidate (and very pregnant) Tania is married to Pablo, a young rising attorney. Their neighbors, Frank and Virginia Butley, are an elderly, well-established white couple with a prize-worthy English garden. A delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spirals into an all-out border dispute exposing both couples’ notions of race, caste, class, and privilege.

Mac fact: Zacarias says her writing is inspired by plays like Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House and Lisa Kron’s Well – both have been produced at McPherson in the past 4 years.