The regional theater scene is about to be turned up to 11.
Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center in West Chester is taking a full dive into bringing live theater to the region by hiring Carmen Khan as the new artistic director.
“We aspire to expand,” said Khan. “We want our audience to leave every performance feeling the world is a little bigger place than when they came in; to expand the theatre’s reach and relevance and influence in the community; to expand West Chester’s sense of what is possible; what kind of a town we can be. I see Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center as a vibrant arts institution and a hub of community and culture for the region.”
Khan, who is originally from London, has lived in West Chester for 32 years and raised her family in the borough. Khan commuted to Philadelphia where she founded and served as Artistic/Executive Director of the award-winning Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. Since she founded the company in 1996, she has directed/produced over sixty productions of Shakespeare’s works. She also was the co-founder of The Laughing Stock Theatre, an all comedy theatre, and she was the Artistic Director of the Red Heel Theatre, which was devoted to the little known classics of the Jacobean age.
While Uptown! has been providing an entertainment spot since it opened in 2017, this is the first year they will have its own professional theater program. In previous years, companies would come in fully formed.
“This is like starting something new,” Khan said. “The infrastructure that’s needed is very different then when you present someone. They would come in and have everything together. So, we have to have a staff infrastructure. It’s a whole other part of the organization now.”
The first season of professional theatre in downtown West Chester begins with William Gibson’s joyful play, “The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod The Nut, & The Slaughter Of 12 Hit Carols In A Pear Tree,” opens just in time for the holidays and will run Nov. 30-Dec. 23. The new year launches with Katori Hall’s spellbinding reimagination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final hours in an Olivier Award-winning Best New Play, “The Mountaintop,” which runs Feb. 1- 26, 2023. The season concludes in the spring with a family-friendly finale as audiences experience a classic story through Laura Eason’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” from April 19-May 7, 2023.
“For our inaugural theatre season here at Uptown, I was looking to share plays that are entertaining, imaginative, gripping, and playful,” Khan said. “On a deeper level these plays offer profound hope for the human condition, and we hope they create connections, awareness and help us grow as global citizens. We are producing a season that will be exciting, thought provoking, and hilarious, with imaginative productions. Pure fun.”
The Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center is located in the heart of West Chester, with plenty of pre-and-post show dining options available.
A former National Guard armory built in 1916, the designers have been true to the history of the building. Leaving a lot of the original brickwork and many of the knooks and crannies that come with old buildings.
“I was here when this was just dirt floors,” said Uptown!’s Executive Director April Evans. “We’ve won preservation awards for restoration of the building. They’ve done a great job of designing, so we are really excited about showing that off.”
The former mess hall has been transformed into Mac’s Foxhole, an on site bar that offers local beers and snacks. The officer’s offices have been turned into the box office.
“We aspire to expand,” said Khan. “We want our audience to leave every performance feeling the world is a little bigger place than when they came in; to expand the theatre’s reach and relevance and influence in the community; to expand West Chester’s sense of what is possible; what kind of a town we can be. I see Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center as a vibrant arts institution and a hub of community and culture for the region.”
For more about Uptown! shows, Theatre Society Subscriptions, Friends of Uptown, and more visit https://uptownwestchester.org/.
Source: Berkshire mont
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