Whim Productions earned its name honestly. While attending the KC Fringe Festival in 2010, Kevin King realized that ordinary people write plays, too — and he wanted to try his hand. “I started thinking about actually writing and producing my own work,” said Kevin, who is now producing artistic manager of Whim. “I said, ‘I think I could do that,’ And a friend said, ‘You should.’ So I did, on a whim. The company was literally started from an artistic whim.”
Kevin wrote the first Whim plays himself, which were produced through KC Fringe. Then in 2015 Whim began a short play festival now known as Alphabet Soup: Theater from Queer Voices, which starting in 2016 became an annual Fringe event. By 2019, Whim Productions had focused its mission on producing only works by LGBTQ+ playwrights.
The company is now poised to assume a more prominent place in local professional theater. In 2023, the once-nomadic Whim moved into the building on Prospect Avenue now known as Whim Space — an arts-focused community center that hosts Fringe events, productions by other theater groups, and meetings of the Pendleton Heights Neighborhood Association.
But Whim Space is primarily the home of Whim Productions, Kansas City’s first theater company devoted exclusively to producing works by LGBTQ+ playwrights telling their stories — toward expanding the canon of queer theater. Recently Kevin answered a few of our questions about the company:
What is the niche that Whim Productions strives to fill?
Whim Productions is the only theater company in Kansas City that is exclusively dedicated to producing the works of LGBTQ+ playwrights. We bring queer narratives written by queer people to the stage.
As part of our mission, we are working to build on the queer canon of theater. We help develop short and full-length plays by LGBTQ+ writers, both locally and nationally.
Why do you think it’s important that Kansas City have an LGBTQ-focused theater company?
Theater is such an intimate art form: Audiences and the actors are literally sharing the same space. When you watch a play, it has an immediacy that you don’t get from television or movies, because you’re sharing the experience not just with your fellow audience members, but with the actors and technicians as well. And the actors are sharing the experience with you. So it’s a very communal art form.
And we think it’s validating and powerful for LGBTQ+ people to come into a space where they can see their community’s experiences reflected on stage, presented with nuance, compassion, and understanding. We’re also grateful to be able to give LGBTQ+ theater makers opportunities to bring narratives that reflect their own lives to the stage.
Kansas City has a broad and diverse LGBTQ+ community that encompasses many ways of being queer. Whim’s programming represents as many flavors of queerness as possible. This enables people to be seen and see how others live their lives.
What are the activities you host each year?
At Whim Space, we host a variety of programming, both by Whim Productions and by other organizations. For example, Improv SpringBoard, a resident company at Whim Space, is dedicated to providing opportunities for women and nonbinary individuals to develop improv skills.
We are one of the host venues for KC Fringe, which is especially exciting for us because Whim got its start in the 2011 Fringe Festival. We’ve also hosted burlesque productions by Risqué Revelry and Morbid Goddesses and hosted play readings by Terr. Studios.
Additionally, the board of the Pendleton Heights Neighborhood Association meets at Whim Space. We’ve also hosted dances, other music performances, and free neighborhood movie nights.
In December 2024, we hosted an exhibit of LGBTQ+ art for the 3rd annual Northeast Arts Open Studio Tour. We’re planning to do more art exhibits in the future.
What is upcoming in Whim Productions programming?
For Whim’s 2025-2026 season, in August we’re doing a developmental reading of a new play, in October we will present Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, and in December we’ll produce a Christmas pageant I wrote called My Kid’s Christmas Program.
In February, we will present a lesbian sex farce called Lipstick by Lane Michael Stanley, and in April we will present the 10th edition of Alphabet Soup: Theater from Queer Voices — a retrospective production featuring favorite plays from the past years.
What is the artistic committee like, and what are they looking for in the selection process?
Our artistic committee is made up of LGBTQ+ theater makers that Whim has closely worked with over the past years. They help select our season programming and also the plays we present in Alphabet Soup.
We look for plays that are bold and interesting, and stories that we haven’t been told over and over. We’re open to all themes and genres, from sci-fi to romance. One genre we don’t focus on much is the coming out process. Those narratives are great and important, but our audiences and actors are more interested in seeing LGBTQ+ people living their lives after they’ve come out.
What are some of your long-term goals for this company? And how do you hope to become more widely known?
The year 2026 will mark the 15th anniversary for Whim. Now that we have our permanent location, Whim Space, we’re not at the mercy of the schedules of other companies’ venues. We can establish a predictable schedule.
We are also building Whim Space into an arts hub. And eventually we plan to have its programming be 100 percent LGBTQ+ focused, like the parent company, Whim Productions.
When Whim Productions established Whim Space, that put us on the map for a lot of people, both literally and figuratively. The visibility of a physical space introduced Whim Productions to many people in Kansas City who hadn’t heard of us.
For more information see whimproductions.org.
