Jerry Mañan’s early life in Kansas was pretty much like that of any Midwestern kid. He was a standout in football and basketball, he went out for track, and he was easygoing and well-liked. Yes, Jerry is Latino, as was nearly everyone at his grade school, All Saints Catholic (which in 2007 merged with two other schools).

But even at Piper Middle School and High School, where he was (in contrast) one of just a half-dozen Hispanic students, he didn’t give much thought to “identifying” as Latino. He was a running back, the fastest student in his class, and involved in everything. 

“Sure, they would be like, oh yeah, that’s my Latino friend,” said Jerry, whose father, Alejandro, emigrated from Cuba and whose mother, Mary, is from Colombia. “But I never felt like an outsider, I always felt involved. I was just Jerry.” It would be nearly a decade before the actor, director, writer, filmmaker, and graphic designer, currently an ensemble member of Kansas City Actors Theatre and a major force in Kansas City theater, would be challenged to come to terms with what, for him, it meant to be Latino. 

The teenaged Jerry, the middle of three brothers, expanded his scholastic activities to include forensics and theater. He excelled at both, beginning in the eighth grade with his role as a wheelchair-bound father in a murder mystery that his own father talks about to this day.

Athletics were still central, though, at least until fate stepped in: During seventh grade football Jerry dislocated his shoulder, and over the next three years that shoulder went out so many times it put a damper his athletic participation. “Looking back, I don’t know that I’m really thankful for that,” he said, “but it all worked out.” 

With energies refocused, Jerry was a high school forensics champion and was starring in productions of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky (as Peter Shaw), The Tempest (as King Alonso), and The Diary of Anne Frank (as Otto Frank). Both of the latter roles he would later reprise, at UMKC and at Avila University. “I sometimes think about what kind of person I might have been if I never had got injured. Or I should say, what kind of person I would have been if I’d never gotten into theater.” 

Not only was Jerry exceptionally gifted at speech and theater, he was having the time of his life. While other school activities “felt like work,” he said, “there wasn’t a single day when I went into theater rehearsals, or forensics tournaments, or even practicing my monologues, that it felt like work. And that’s still true today. Every time I go to a rehearsal or do a show, I can put in eight hours at my full-time job and then go to rehearsals or performances that evening … and it never feels like work.” 

At Avila he studied with Robert Foulk and Matt Schwader (the latter is also an Actors Theatre member), and he double majored in acting and film & digital media. His stage roles ranged widely, with Shakespeare as an important thread. He was a standout in Avila’s Romeo and Juliet, and as a senior he nabbed his first professional role as Friar Francis in Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing. In 2019, he won the Best Classical Acting award at the American College Theatre Festival. 

His professional appearances continued to capture the eye of theater audiences: the Wolf in Refuge (Unicorn Theatre); a warm and sympathetic Laurie in Actors Theatre’s Little Women; a down-and-out alcoholic in KC Public Theatre’s The Disappointments; a gay boyfriend in Colman Domingo’s Dot, a cynical Astrov in Uncle Vanya.

He has performed with music groups (Bach Aria Soloists’ Adventures of Don Quixote), acted in commercials and industrial films, worked with What If Puppets, and starred in feature films such as Phillip Arthur Dixon’s comedy, Midwest Skidmark. 

During the early weeks of 2020, when COVID-19 brought the theater world to a halt, Jerry had a chance to reflect on his place in the profession. That summer, a collective of 300 Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous artists circulated a strongly worded manifesto titled BIPOC Demands for White American Theater. 

The 29-page document was a call for greater BIPOC representation and for an end to systemic racism in the theater industry. Its impact was seismic. And in its wake, Jerry found that his ethnicity was now front-and-center to his existence as an artist. “It really wasn’t until 2020 that I had to figure out what my Latino identity meant to me. I suddenly felt like everybody saw me that way.” It’s true, he was Latino and always had been. “But I was still just Jerry,” he said again, with a laugh. 

Theater companies are still absorbing the ramifications of that document: Actors Theatre took it to heart with uncommon resolve. “We’re still working through that,” Jerry said, “We’re all still living in it. I think ultimately it will be a positive thing: it will move the needle toward change.” 

Meanwhile Jerry has become an advocate for Latino-oriented theater in our region. With fellow actor-playwright Freddy Acevedo he created a virtuosic two-man show Maquinitas (KC Fringe Festival), and last year he directed a new play by Sofiana Olivera Abalan, El Arbol de Aguacate, in Lawrence. The latter is believed to be the first professionally staged local theater production performed entirely in Spanish. 

Jerry happily embraces his Latino identity, but he says it doesn’t necessarily command his whole self. “As somebody with brown skin, it’s something I can’t disregard,” he said. “And the true Latino experiences, with my family and culture, encompass a part of my life. … But a lot of my experiences are just those of somebody who grew up in Kansas City, in the Midwest.” 

His life reached a different kind of turning point in March 2025, when he married fellow theater artist Kitty Corum. The two had become acquainted in conjunction with Forge Repertory Theatre’s The Secret in the Wings in early 2020. COVID-19 cut the production short, but not the relationship.

Currently a PhD student at The University of Kansas’ Department of Theatre and Dance, Kitty is also a significant presence in Kansas City theater. 

Jerry’s “day job” since 2023 is as graphic designer for the marketing department of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He is increasingly interested in projection design, which forms an auspicious blend of his dual interests in visual arts and the stage.

Last month he was projection designer for the Actors Theatre’s production of Eureka Day, a witty play about childhood vaccines and the parental debates over this now-controversial subject. 

Currently Jerry is creating an adaptation of Shaw’s Arms and the Man, which KCAT will produce in early 2027. That project is an indication not only of the central place that theater holds in Jerry’s life, but also of the confidence that Actors Theatre has in his gifts. 

“I love graphic design, and I work with a great team,” Jerry said. “And I don’t think I can get away with not having a day job.” Yet theater looms ever larger in his life. “My sense for this upcoming year is, maybe I can do this more—and I want to do it more.” 

—By Paul Horsley 

Kansas City Actors Theatre presents G.B. Shaw’s Arms and the Man this January 27th through February the 14th, at the Frantze Family Black Box Theatre at The Goppert Performing Arts Center, Avila University. For tickets go to kcactors.org. To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send him an email (paul@kcindependent.com) or reach him on Facebook or on Instagram or X (@phorsleycritic).