Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center hires its first artistic director

For years, the Uptown! Knauer Performing Arts Center in West Chester has been home to a thriving artistic community hosting musicians as well as dance and theater companies in its space along with an active children’s art program, including summer camp.

But the long COVID-19 pause gave its board a chance to rethink its mission. The result? Almost everything the same, except that it now plans to produce its own theater and more carefully curate the other performances in the space.

To make all that happen, it hired its first ever artistic director, Carmen Khan, former executive artistic director for Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, which offered performances and managed an extensive classroom program.

“We are trying to have a unique voice in the community and also how we are serving the community,” Khan said. “Rather than just being a venue that books things into, we want to instead think carefully about the art that elevates the community.”

For her, elevating the community doesn’t consist of one well-meaning, but serious production after another. “The mission is to be entertaining, but moving,” Khan said.

“To us theater-types, sometimes entertaining is a bad word. There’s a lot of entertaining that’s empty calories,” she said. But Khan embraces the word in the service of expanding the audience’s world view. “When you go into the theater, you come out different and your understanding goes up a bit. Can we open a few doors [into new ways of thinking and feeling]?”

Khan recalls doors being opened for her in London, where she enjoyed a childhood rich with theater, music, and dance, all ticket and transportation costs underwritten by the British government for young people. “It changed the trajectory of my life.”

Whether it’s a beautiful morning or some enchanted evening, Oscar Hammerstein 2d penned those lyrics, along with many others, among the most famous musical theater songs sung on stage and whenever theater folks get together with a piano and some wine. They’ll be belting out Hammerstein songs from Sound of Music, Oklahoma, the King and I, Carousel, and South Pacific.

Hammerstein, who contributed lyrics to 850 songs, spent much of his career in Doylestown. His home, Highland Farm, is now a bed and breakfast. But there’s a $5 million move afoot, with the cooperation of the B&B owner, to purchase the property and turn the barn into a theater education center for young people and the house into a museum celebrating Hammerstein’s legacy.

“We will climb every mountain and get there,” said Greg Roth, who sings Hammerstein songs in the shower and chairs the board of the Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center. So far, donors have raised $1 million – half the price to purchase Highland Farm.

Coming up on July 11 is a $500-a-ticket fund-raiser featuring Broadway entertainment by Christy Altomare (Mamma Mia, Carrie), Derek Klena (Wicked, Anastasia), and Justin Guarini (American Idol) and hosted by Ted Chapin. Actor Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, will be in attendance, along with one of Hammerstein’s grandchildren.

Fittingly, the gala, which includes a cocktail hour, silent auction, and three-course meal, will be held on the grounds of playwright George S. Kaufman’s estate, Barley Sheaf Farm nearby in Bucks County.

July 11, Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education at the Inn at Barley Sheaf Farm, 5281 York Rd., Holicong, 215-346-7320, ext. 2 or hammersteinmuseum.org.

Just in time for Independence Day, a family-friendly version of The American Revolution comes to Christ Church Neighborhood House – 60 minutes of physical theater, comedy, and unique staging. The unique staging part truly is – with all the actors working two feet off the ground and sharing 21 square feet of space — the size of a dining table. Presented by Chicago-based Theater Unspeakable and Let’s Make History Productions.

The Valley Forge Tourism and Convention Bureau will present a free performance followed by an hour-long theater workshop at 3:30 p.m. June 25 at the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge National Historic Park.

June 28 through July 4, Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St., Philadelphia, Americanrevolutiontheshow.com.

Comedian Mary Radzinski headlines Laugh Out Loud Comedy Night, a comedy fund-raiser presented by the South Camden Theatre Co., hosted by stand-up comedian Connor McGovern. Others in the lineup include Camden’s own LaTice Mitchell, who has been seen on ABC’s The View, as well as Mel Harris, a comedian from Philadelphia.

June 25, Waterfront South Theatre, 400 Jasper St., Camden. 856-409-0365 or southcamdentheatre.org.

Bucks County Playhouse producing director Alexander Fraser must have a serious case of deja vue with the New Hope playhouse’s current production of Kinky Boots. He worked on the original production from inception to production. Even so, this production, one of the Playhouse’s largest and most diverse, is going to be different with Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin giving it a new style under her direction. Cyndi Lauper, who wrote music and lyrics for the original production, has given the Playhouse permission to use a new song, “So Long Charlie,” in its show.

June 24 through July 30 at Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, 215-862-2121 or bcptheater.org.

Quintessence Theatre Group has extended its side-by-side runs of Flyin’ West, Pearl Cleage’s story of Black women pioneers, and Camille, by Alexandre Dumas fils through July 3.

Through July 3, Quintessence Theatre Group at the Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, 215-987-4450 or quintessencetheatre.org