KC Daily Live on Stage! - August 2026

As back-to-school rolls around again, KC theater companies begin their upcoming seasons and finish off the summer’s fun. Try one of these theater experiences before the Fall falls upon us all:

The following list was graciously compiled by Mark Edelman, the founder and president of Theater League. Mark is a playwright who loves writing about theater.

July 2 – September 6 | New Theatre Restaurant

Overland Park’s own Broadway star Hayley Podschun—so great as Galinda in “Wicked” in NYC and on tour—trades in her Emerald City wardrobe for the smart attire of a Harvard Law School grad student. Dumped by her high school boyfriend who thinks she’s a dumb blonde, Hayley as Elle Woods follows the cad to Cambridge, where the Malibu princess turns out to be one smart cookie.

July 2 – September 6 | STARLIGHT THEATRE

The Tony® Award-winning Best Musical was lovingly ripped off from the film classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail with just the right amounts of shrubbery, killer rabbits, flying cows, taunting Frenchmen, a Lady of the Lake, and those indefatigable knights who say “ni”.

August 5-23 | City Stage at Union Station

KC Actors Theatre starts its new season with a piece by acclaimed playwright Lynn Nottage. Esther works as a seamstress in New York City circa 1905, sewing exquisite lingerie for an array of clients. Her skill with needle and thread has led to an absence of a personal life until she begins a forbidden romance with an Orthodox Jewish fabric vendor while being courted via email by a worker building the Panama Canal. Nottage honors a legacy of a woman whom history nearly forgot.

August 7-30 | Quality Hill Playhouse

Popular Broadway (“A Catered Affair”) composer-lyricist John Bucchino’s Lincoln Center cabaret revue comes to downtown Kansas City just in time for all of the FIFA folks to move on and give us our city back.

August 12-30 | Music Hall

Stephen Schwartz’s magnum opus and one of the most successful Broadway musicals (and now a two-part film) lands in downtown Kansas City, just east of where the whole Dorothy saga started in Kansas. L. Frank Baum had no idea how far that balloon would travel.

August 12-30 | Unicorn Theatre

The Unicorn kicks off its 2026-27 season with Terrence McNally’s good old-fashioned door-slamming farce, albeit moved into the eponymous gay bathouse. It seems that Gaetano, a hapless, middle-aged husband, must hide out from his hoodlum brother-in-law, a quest that takes him inadvertently to the aforementioned public cleaning facility. Towel-clad fellows, bumbling detectives, and an over-the-top chanteuse looking for her big break collide for laughs and pratfalls by one of our most celebrated American playwrights.

August 13-23 | The Arts Asylum

In this new spin on a classic tale, the villainous outlaw Robin and his band of thieving knaves are terrorizing the innocent people of Nottingham--  at least, that’s what the Sheriff has been proclaiming. But those closest to Robin - Marian, Will Stoutly, Little John, and the rest of their merry band - know the true origin story. Find out how Robin of Locksley became an outlaw.

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