Ask playwright Scott Myers why he started writing for the stage and he will tell you that it started with a fire.
That was the devastating 2011 fire that required the Westport Presbyterian Church to be rebuilt.
“Somehow the fire totally exploded my head,” Myers, who in addition to writing plays serves as the pastor of the church, says. He had never written a play before. But one evening he saw an interview with a woman who had known John F. Kennedy, and it sparked his imagination.
“JFK: A Ghostly Evening” is, like many of Myers’ works, a chance to create conversations that never happened in real life, but would have been oh so interesting if they had. It tells the story of an imaginary conversation between real characters: John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his wife, Coretta Scott King. The Kings are invited for dinner and a sleepover at the White House. Over the evening, the two couples discuss the rising violence of white supremacists in the south, the need to protect civil rights workers and people registering African Americans to vote, and the Vietnam War. JFK confronts the ghost of recently-murdered Medgar Evers.
The Kansas City Star called the play, “….a work that packs a punch…the show is buoyed by serious intent and a provocative view of history.“
For Myers, the attraction to playwriting is the ability to imagine worlds that do not exist. “I just like living in an alternative reality,” he says.
He’s now written 12 plays in the past 10 years. They include: “JFK– A Ghostly Evening;”
“Star Over Our Tree House;” “Stealing Kandinsky;” “The Moon’s Language;” “Oracle of the Ozarks;” “Your Flight Leaves Tonight;” “All My Shrinks Have Been Spies;” “Bottle of Fire;”
“Mo Motley and the Money Gods;” “Only the Wounds and Weapons Have Changed (co-writer with Jacqee Gafford);” “Gonna Shout When the Truth About You Comes Out;” and “Big Horn’s Secret.”
Some of the works have social justice themes, but Myers points out that he has also written a play based on a crime that happened in the Ozarks and another that explored the relationship between two characters whose mothers had recently died.
Myers’ plays have all been produced by the Westport Center for the Arts, a nonprofit outgrowth of a Westport Presbyterian Church arts committee. In the beginning, they were often staged readings. Later, the plays were produced in the church sanctuary space. In recent years, Myers has taken his plays to the professional Just Off Broadway Theatre, after receiving advice from a trusted collogue that to fully realize the plays, they have to be done on a ”real” stage.
That move has improved the production value of the plays, but also creates a challenge, Myers says. Kansas City has few smaller venues that are affordable for theatre companies. The Westport Center for the Arts values keeping ticket prices low. ““We want people to come and listen and give what they can afford,” Myers says. “We realize that some people will be able to give big donation, while others won’t.” The group has to be creative in finding ways to stage the plays without having to raise prices.
The play “Only the Wounds and Weapons Have Changed” has just closed after a successful run at the Just Off Broadway Theatre. Myers is already at work on his next play, which he hopes to produce next spring. Titled “Gonna Shout When the Truth About You Comes Out,” it takes place on Juneteenth at 18th and Vine and stars, like many of his other works, a combination of real and imagined characters.