Script in Hand 2012

The Kansas City Public Library presents the sixth season of Script-in-Hand, with the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre returning for Women of the Years, a series of plays featuring some of the most compelling female leads in drama.

Major funding for the 2012 Script-in-Hand series has been provided by a generous grant from the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, with additional support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The 2012 Script-in-Hand Women of the Years series is co-sponsored by the UMKC Women's Center [1] and the Junior League of Kansas City, Missouri.

Admission to all performances is free. See below for RSVP information.

A public reception following each performance is sponsored by the Friends of the Kansas City Public Library.

THREE TALL WOMEN [2] | By Edward Albee
Sunday, January 22, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.
RSVP: kclibrary.org [3] • 816.701.3407

In the aftermath of a stroke, a dying woman in her 90s lies incapacitated as three versions of herself (each one a different age) argue about her frustrated life, with the youngest straining futilely against the woman she has no choice but to become. Far from the cryptic and absurd Albeegories that defined his aesthetic, Albee presents an autobiographical exorcism that earned him a third Pulitzer Prize and ignited a critical reappraisal of his work.

MASTER CLASS [4] | By Terrence McNally
Sunday, February 26, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.
RSVP: kclibrary.org [5] • 816.701.3407

This confrontational drama portrays opera diva Maria Callas as she conducts abusive one-on-one singing lessons with promising young students who are quickly disillusioned and deflated by their interactions with the once-great star. Inspired by a series of workshops taught by Callas at Juilliard in the early 1970s, this imagined biography examines her relationship with a domineering mother and longtime lover Aristotle Onassis – and how the diva coped with losing the only voice that mattered.

THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG [6] | By Wendy Wasserstein
Sunday, March 25, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.
RSVP: kclibrary.org [7] • 816.701.3407

On the occasion of her 54th birthday, Sara reconnects with her far-flung sisters, dispensing blunt advice to resolve their problems in the style that made her a high-profile banker. But the conversation is not unilateral, and even Sara walks away with her mind (and perhaps her heart) pried open. Very much in keeping with the tone of Wasserstein’s trailblazing presentations of strong female characters, this play is considered her most hopeful.

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF [8] | By Ntozake Shange
Sunday, April 22, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Bluford Branch, 3050 Prospect
RSVP: kclibrary.org [9] • 816.701.3407

This 1975 “choreopoem” is a unique tale of the black woman’s journey in America and is a compilation of 20 poems set to music while touching on a spectrum of emotions from love to broken hearts and abandonment. In its review of the original Broadway production, The New Yorker described For Colored Girls… as “a firebomb of a poem” that incorporated a mournful blues with a trickster spirit reminiscent of Richard Pryor.

MY FAIR LADY [10] | By Lerner & Lowe
Sunday, May 13, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.
RSVP: kclibrary.org [11] • 816.701.3407

Often described as the perfect American musical, this comedy follows an inherently cruel premise – that phonetics expert Henry Higgins can make cockney-spouting street merchant Eliza Doolittle into a passable duchess by improving her diction – to a romantic conclusion. Its many memorable songs include: “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Based on the George Bernard Shaw play, this adaptation – like all others – betrays the fierce independence that Shaw originally wrote for Eliza, though her strong will remains evident throughout.

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES [12] | By Jon Jory
Sunday, June 10, 2012 • 2 p.m. • Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.
RSVP: kclibrary.org [13] • 816.701.3407

This adaptation of the Lucy Maud Montgomery novel tells the enduring story of an orphan girl whose precocious curiosity and unceasing conversation win over her adoptive parents, despite their having expected a boy to help run the farm. The Jory script employs inventive casting that simultaneously celebrates Anne’s uniqueness and emphasizes the universality of her search for acceptance.