Starlight Theatre is a 7,739-seat [1] outdoor theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, United States that presents Broadway shows and concerts. It is one of the two major remaining self-producing outdoor theatres in the U.S. and Starlight's Cohen stagehouse also permits it to present many national Broadway touring shows.
Starlight Theatre’s story dates back to 1925, the year Romania’s Queen Marie paid a visit to Kansas City. To celebrate her arrival, the Kansas City Federation of Music organized a showcase of local talent for the Queen that was also open to the public.
Profits from the showcase were then placed in the city trust and proposals for the location of Kansas City’s outdoor theatre began. One suggested site was where Kansas City Art Institute now stands, but area residents disapproved of building such a large structure in their neighborhood. Another possible location was just north of University of Missouri–Kansas City, although these plans were also shelved because officials feared the theatre would compete with the newly completed Municipal Auditorium.
After 15 years of proposals, the need for a venue to house celebrations commemorating Kansas City’s 100th birthday sped up the process. A committee was quickly chosen, Swope Park was deemed the location, and construction began in December 1949. On June 3rd, 1950, in a facility not yet fully complete, the historical revue, Thrills of a Century, opened at Starlight Theatre in celebration of Kansas City’s 100th birthday. The show played nightly through July 10. Hundreds of local citizens participated in the pageant, and thousands turned out each night. Show highlights included the staging of the Battle of Westport, and the original locomotive that crossed the Hannibal Bridge 81 years before chugging across the stage on specially built rails.
Following the success of Thrills of a Century, the Starlight Theatre Association of Kansas City, Inc., was formed as a 501(c)(3)nonprofit organization. John A. Moore was elected as the association’s first president, and New York veteran Richard Berger was hired as Starlight’s first producing director, a position he would hold through 1971.
Starlight opened its first Broadway season with the performance of The Desert Song on June 25, 1951.
In 1958, Jerry Lewis paid for a stage extension that covered the orchestra pit. In the early 1980s, the stage was permanently extended over the orchestra pit, bringing on stage action closer to the audience. This extension lasted until the building of the 10-story Jeannette and Jerome Cohen Community Stage in 2000.
During the 1960s production of the musical Mr. President, President Harry S. Truman made a guest appearance in the opening night show. An attack of appendicitis forced Truman to leave Starlight by ambulance during the intermission.[2]
Starlight is one of two self-producing outdoor theatres in the U.S.[3][4]
The addition of the Jeannette and Jerome Cohen Community Stage in 2000 made it one of the largest roadhouses in the country. Starlight began presenting major national tours in 2000 to bring more recent and contemporary Broadway musicals to Kansas City.
Starlight Theatre hosted Great Plains' musicians Melissa Etheridge (from Kansas) in 1994, Sheryl Crow (from southern Missouri) in 2008, 311 from Omaha in 2013, and The Fray from Denver in 2009.
To provide entertainment year-round to current patrons and new audiences, Starlight created a live indoor theatre series called Starlight Indoors that premiered in 2015. Featuring small comedies, musicals, parodies and other unconventional shows, Starlight Indoors is presented inside the heated performance space of Starlight’s Cohen Community Stage House.
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago ". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
Jean Schwartz was a Hungarian-born Jewish American composer and pianist. He is best known for his work writing the scores for more than 30 Broadway musicals, and for his creation of more than 1,000 popular songs with the lyricist William Jerome. Schwartz and Jerome also performed together on the vaudeville stage in the United States; sometimes in collaboration with Maude Nugent, Jerome's wife, and the Dolly Sisters. Schwartz was married to Jenny Dolly from 1913 to 1921.
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers.
Jerome Robbins was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television.
Carla Alberghetti is an Italian soprano singer. She was born on the Greek island of Rhodes.
The Golden Apple is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Moross and both book and lyrics by John Treville Latouche. The musical's story is based on parts of the Iliad and Odyssey. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1954 and then transferred to Broadway.
The Gershwin Theatre is a Broadway theater at 222 West 51st Street, on the second floor of the Paramount Plaza office building, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Opened in 1972, it is operated by the Nederlander Organization and is named after brothers George and Ira Gershwin, who wrote several Broadway musicals. The Gershwin is Broadway's largest theater, with approximately 1,933 seats across two levels. Over the years, it has hosted musicals, dance companies, and concerts.
Mary Testa is an American stage and film actress. She is a three-time Tony Award nominee, for performances in revivals of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town (1998), 42nd Street (2001) and Oklahoma (2019).
David Cantor is an American actor and singer from New York City best known for his stage work in musical theatre, including appearances on Broadway in the musical Evita and in both comic and dramatic roles in a number of national tours, Off-Broadway and regional productions. He has also played roles in films and television.
The Starlight Bowl is an amphitheater in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It was constructed for the 1935–1936 California Pacific International Exposition and seats 4,300. It was originally named the Ford Bowl, as Ford Motor Company sponsored outdoor concerts at the venue during the exposition by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the San Francisco Symphony, and other performers.
Billion Dollar Baby is a musical with the book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the score by Morton Gould. Comden and Green were fresh from their success with On the Town, and the production team was something of an On the Town reunion: once again, George Abbott directed and Jerome Robbins choreographed.
The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA, at 16th and Broadway, near the city's Power & Light District, the T-Mobile Center and the Crossroads Arts District. Opened in 2011, it houses two venues: the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre, home of the Kansas City Ballet and Lyric Opera of Kansas City; and the 1,600-seat Helzberg Hall, home of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. Both venues host a variety of artists and performance groups in addition to these three resident entities.
Mr. President is a musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. The story focuses on fictional US President Stephen Decatur Henderson, who runs into political trouble following a disastrous trip to the Soviet Union, and his problems with his children. Bored with life as a civilian after his presidency ends, he decides to return to political life.
Alvin Colt was an American costume designer. Colt worked on over 50 Broadway shows.
Paul Gemignani is an American musical director with a career on Broadway and West End theatre spanning over forty years.
Marilyn Maye McLaughlin is an American singer, musical theater actress and masterclass educator. With a career spanning eight decades, Maye has performed music in the styles of cabaret, jazz and pop music. She has received one nomination from the Grammy Awards and had commercial success as a recording artist.
The Wizard of Oz is a musical commissioned by The Muny based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, using the film's songs by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg. The book of the musical is by Frank Gabrielson, who would later write an adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz (1960) for Shirley Temple.
Miss 1917 is a musical revue with a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, music by Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert and others, and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, Otto Harbach, Henry Blossom and others. Made up of a string of vignettes, the show features songs from such musicals as The Wizard of Oz, Three Twins, Babes in Toyland, Ziegfeld Follies and The Belle of New York.
Jerome Coopersmith was an American dramatist known for television, theater, and his work as a professor of screenplay writing. Working in the television industry since 1947, Coopersmith authored more than 100 television scripts for anthology dramas, episodic series and television movies and specials. His television work included Johnny Jupiter (1953-1954), Armstrong Circle Theater (1955–1963), Hawaii Five-O (1967–1976), and Streets of San Francisco (1973), and the holiday classics 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) and An American Christmas Carol (1979). Coopersmith's theatrical plays span Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional productions. His Broadway musical, Baker Street (1965), based on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, earned him a Tony Nomination as Author of Best Musical. He was a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, and was a member and past officer of the Writers Guild of America, East. On November 12, 2019, at age 94, Coopersmith was honored with the highest distinction of Chevalier, or Knight, in the National Order of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his service to France in World War II.
Michele Ragusa is an American actress and singer currently residing in New Jersey. She is best known for her work in Broadway musicals and her solo performances and staged concerts with Symphony Orchestras around the United States. She also played a recurring role on the television comedy Happyish.
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