Kitchen Theatre Company
Kitchen Theatre Company is a non-profit professional theater company in Ithaca, New York that focuses on making “bold, intimate, and engaging" theater. The Kitchen was founded in 1991 and is now in its 27th season. KTC is a member of the Theatre Communications Group and operates under a Small Professional Theater contract with the Actors’ Equity Association.
History
Kitchen Theatre Company was created in 1991.KTC resided at the Clinton House from 1995 to 2009. In 2010, Kitchen Theatre Company moved to 417 W. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street, making history by becoming the first theater company in Ithaca to own its own location. They raised $1.2M to construct a LEED-certified green building that includes a 99-seat thrust stage space, dressing rooms, green room, scene shop, inner lobby, outer lobby/art gallery, hospitality bar, box office, and a glass entranceway called "the beacon".
Artistic Director Emerita Rachel Lampert led the company from 1997 to 2017.
Lampert retired at the end of the 2016-2017 season, and M. Bevin O’Gara took the helm as the company’s new Producing Artistic Director. O’Gara came to the Kitchen from Boston, where she was Associate Producer at the Huntington Theatre and directed productions throughout the Boston area.
Productions
| 2016-2017 Season | |
| Title | Playwright |
| Hand to God | Robert Askins |
| Precious Nonsense | Rachel Lampert |
| Death Boogie | Darian Dauchan |
| Birds of East Africa | Wendy Dann |
| Sex With Strangers | Laura Eason |
| Throw Pitchfork | Alexander Thomas |
| Clean Alternatives | Brian Dykstra |
| 2014-2015 Season | |
| Title | Playwright |
| The House | Brian Parks |
| Lonely Planet | Steven Dietz |
| Sunset Baby | Dominique Morisseau |
| Count Me In | Rachel Lampert |
| A Body of Water | Lee Blessing |
| Solo Play Festival | Lorraine Rodriguez-Reyes, Darian Dauchan, Michelle Courtney Berry & Ryan Hope Travis |
| Swimming in the Shallows | Adam Bock |
| Thin Walls | Alice Eve Cohen |
| 2013-2014 Season | |
| Title | Playwright |
| Heroes | Gérald Sibleyras, translated by Tom Stoppard |
| From White Plains | Michael Pearlman in collaboration with Craig Wesley Divino, Karl Gregory, Jimmy King and Aaron Rossini |
| Black Pearl Sings | Frank Higgins |
| Venus in Fur | David Ives |
| Cock | Mike Bartlett |
| Lungs | Duncan Macmillan |
| Seminar | Theresa Rebeck |
| Slashes of Light | Judy Tate |
Production highlights include:
- Rob Ackerman’s play Call Me Waldo premiered at the KTC in January 2012 and was produced later the same year in NYC by the Working Theatre.
- Kitchen Theatre Artistic Director Rachel Lampert and composer Larry Pressgrove have written five musicals together, all of which premiered at the Kitchen Theatre. Their musical The Angle of the Sun premiered at the Kitchen and was then presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.
- Rachel Lampert's play The Soup Comes Last premiered at the Kitchen and then moved to the 59e59th street theater. Her play Precious Nonsense premiered at the Kitchen and had its second production at Circle Bar-B Dinner Theater in Santa Barbara, CA.
- Four new plays by Brian Dykstra have had their first full productions at the Kitchen Theatre Company: Brian Dykstra Selling Out The Two of You, A Play on Words and Strangerhorse.
- The Drunken City by Adam Bock was commissioned by the KTC and had its world premiere in 2005.The New York City premiere was in 2008 at Playwrights Horizons.
- First productions of plays by Rachel Axler and Tanya Barfield.
Achievements
- 2014 Best Theatre Company.
- 2011 Best Theatre Company.
- 2008 Syracuse Live Theater Award, Best Production of the Summer Season.
- Since 2007, the Kitchen Theatre Company has received operating support from the Shubert Organization, a national foundation dedicated to sustaining and advancing the live performing arts in the United States.
- 2006 Best Small Business of the Year Award, Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce. The Kitchen was the first not-for-profit recipient of this award.
- 2005 Syracuse Live Theatre Award, Best Actor in a Season.
- 2005 Syracuse Live Theater Award, Best Actress of the Summer Season.