What do you think of when you hear “chamber music?” Four musicians in black, playing stately and somber string compositions. Oh, so dignified and oh, what a snooze. Right?

“It’s hard to pinpoint the single moment when my appreciation for this art became a mild obsession,” writes Kelly Ludwig in her book Detour Art (Kansas City Star Books, 2007). “It probably started from the get-go.”

Since UMKC’s Spencer Theatre opened in 1979, technology has transformed lighting and sound from stagecraft to highly specialized technical arts. Over the years, though, the theater did not keep up with those advances and that left its home company, Kansas City Rep, in a disadvantaged position.

Frank Galati and the Steppenwolf Theatre were both born in Highland Park—Galati in the hospital in 1943, the company in a church basement in 1974—and his professional and personal lives have been intertwined with both the wider Chicago theater scene and what is readily recognized as one of the leading theatrical companies in the country ever since.

What do you think of when you hear “chamber music?” Four musicians in black, playing stately and somber string compositions. Oh, so dignified and oh, what a snooze. Right?

“It’s hard to pinpoint the single moment when my appreciation for this art became a mild obsession,” writes Kelly Ludwig in her book Detour Art (Kansas City Star Books, 2007). “It probably started from the get-go.”

Since UMKC’s Spencer Theatre opened in 1979, technology has transformed lighting and sound from stagecraft to highly specialized technical arts. Over the years, though, the theater did not keep up with those advances and that left its home company, Kansas City Rep, in a disadvantaged position.

Frank Galati and the Steppenwolf Theatre were both born in Highland Park—Galati in the hospital in 1943, the company in a church basement in 1974—and his professional and personal lives have been intertwined with both the wider Chicago theater scene and what is readily recognized as one of the leading theatrical companies in the country ever since.