Kansas City Repertory Theatre

With thirty-five years of experience in acting, directing, and producing, Keathley built on the traditions of the company while introducing new dimensions and programming to the theatre.

He introduced Rep audiences to such contemporary writers as Athol Fugard, David Mamet and Peter Shaffer, and continued the classic tradition with Shakespeare, Sophocles and Molière.

Upon their retirements, at the celebration welcoming their successor, Peter Altman, Keathley and Costin each offered a gift symbolizing the passing of their legacies to him.

Costin's gift to Altman was an audience base of 100,000 and cash reserves and endowment funds of more than $10 million, making the Rep one of the nation's most financially stable institutions.

Under his direction and that of the theater's board of directors, led by William C. Nelson, Kansas City Rep was committed to building on its four-decade tradition, expanding its audience, upgrading and diversifying its range of artists, and extending its repertoire to include new work and large-scale classics.

[3] The board of directors voted in 2004 to rename the company Kansas City Repertory Theatre to reflect better its identity, location, and audience.

Rosen started a new era at the Rep with an inaugural 2008/09 season that included the pre-New York run of the hip-hop musical Clay; August Wilson's final play in his ten-play cycle Radio Golf; Mary Zimmerman's epic Arabian Nights; a new musical based on Sherwood Anderson's novel Winesburg, Ohio; a new thriller, The Borderland; Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie; and the French farce A Flea in Her Ear.