Summer guide 2015: Filling up three full months of summer events
JUNE
Monday, June 1
Negroni Week
Various restaurants
Through Friday, June 5.
Thursday, June 4
Avett Brothers
Starlight Theatre
Nick Offerman
Unity Temple on the Plaza
Jesus Christ Superstar
Musical Theater Heritage
Through Sunday, June 21.
The musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber gets the professionally mounted Musical Theater Heritage treatment, with a talented ensemble of musicians and singers.
The Pitch Golf Tournament
Minor Park
Friday, June 5
Crossroads Summer Block Party
Food Truck Face Off
The Roasterie parking lot (1204 West 27th Street)
mymcpl.org
Sugar Creek Slavic Festival
Through June 6
Jazzoo
The Kansas City Zoo
Spy opens at movie theaters.
Saturday, June 6
Old 97s
Crossroads KC at Grinders
Sporting KC vs. Seattle Sounders
Sporting Park
Hospital Hill Run
The inaugural Midwest Tea Fest
The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial
Tuesday, June 9
Camelot
Starlight Theatre
Through June 14.
King Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table come to Starlight Theatre in a different sort of game of thrones. The Lerner and Loewe musical won four Tony Awards.
Thursday, June 11
D’Angelo
The Midland
Lucinda Williams
Crossroads KC at Grinders
Friday, June 12
Greek Festival
St. Dionysios Greek Orthodox Church
Through June 14
Jurassic World and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl open at movie theaters.
LiveKC’s Raucous Caucus
The Backyard at Barney Allis Plaza
Saturday, June 13
PorchFestKC “community music celebration”
West Plaza
Westport Beer Festival
West 18th Street Fashion Show
18th Street between Baltimore and Wyandotte
west18thstreetfashionshow.com
KC Scottish Highland Games & Celtic Festival
Riverside
Through June 14
Sunday, June 14
Dog-n-Jog
Country Club Plaza
The Big Gay Picnic
(MoKan CommUNITY Consortium)
Penn Valley Park
Tuesday, June 16
Geto Boys
The Riot Room
Heart of America Shakespeare Festival
Through July 5.
It wouldn’t be summer in KC without Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare in the Park. A plethora of talented local actors and crew set up their own outdoor theater at the west Plaza’s Southmoreland Park. This year, it’s King Lear, starring John Rensenhouse, with Mark Robbins, Kyle Hatley, Brian Paulette, Emily Peterson, Cinnamon Schultz, Jacques Roy, and many more KC favorites.
Once
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Through June 21.
Best Musical was just one of eight Tony Awards that Once received in 2012. In this intimate love story, set in Dublin, cast members portraying musicians play their own instruments. Presented by Theater League.
A Year With Frog and Toad
The Coterie Theatre
Through August 2.
Kids love the outdoors in summertime, but Coterie Theatre provides them with plenty of thrilling entertainment. Jerry Jay Cranford directs this Tony-nominated jazzy musical about a friendship.
Thursday, June 18
Belle and Sebastian, with Courtney Barnett
Uptown Theater
Disco and folk wed blissfully on Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance,the January-released album from Scotland’s Belle and Sebastian. The record might not have been what longtime fans were expecting from the 18-year-old band, but it’s far from a disappointment. Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett — whose March-released debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, has been one of this year’s surprise breakthroughs — opens the show.
Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick
Starlight Theatre
Center of the City Fest
Harling’s Upstairs
Through June 20
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Festival on the Vine
KC Friends of Alvin Ailey
Gem Theater
Through June 20
Friday, June 19
Off-the-Wall film series: Tron
Kansas City Central Library
Boulevardia
Through June 21
Royals vs. Red Sox
Through June 21
Big Slick Celebrity Weekend fundraiser
Through June 20
Inside Out opens at movie theaters.
Saturday, June 20
Tiny House Jamboree
Tiny House Collective Kansas City hosts a guided tour of tiny houses in KC, starting at 18th Street and Broadway; a permaculture demonstration; and local vendors representing solar, TH models and more.
Monday, June 22
Free State Festival
Through June 28
Wednesday, June 24
2015 Urban Grown Tour kickoff
Friday, June 26
Ted 2 opens at movie theaters.
Saturday, June 27
The Rolling Stones
Arrowhead Stadium
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts rock just as hard as they did more than four decades ago, when the Stones put out Sticky Fingers. Expect the band’s Arrowhead set to emphasize that classic album, making this a bucket-list show. Bonus: Multiplatinum artist (and BFF of Taylor Swift) Ed Sheeran opens.
Maker Faire Kansas City
Union Station
Through June 28
FroYo 5k
Liberty Memorial
Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know?
Yardley Hall, Johnson County Community College
jccc.edu/performing-arts-series
JULY
Wednesday, July 1
Craig Finn, Heartless Bastards
RecordBar
Emmet Gowin: Photographs opens at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Terminator Genisys opens at movie theaters.
Monday, July 6
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Crossroads KC at Grinders
ARC Week
The Blue Room
Through July 11
Thursday, July 9
Rush
Sprint Center
Friday, July 10
Summer White Party
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Kelley Hunt
Olathe Free Summer Concert Series
Frontier Park
Wednesday, July 15
Wilco
Crossroads KC at Grinders
Thirteen years on, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is still one of the most influential records of the 21st century. Granted, we’re not very far into the century, but that shouldn’t detract from the gorgeous cacophony of distorted electronics and far-left-of-center pop melodies. This summer, Wilco celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Ant Man opens at movie theaters.
The Invasion
Central Standard Theatre
Through July 26.
Bob Paisley’s Central Standard Theatre brings back The Invasion, with actors and works from the U.K., the United States and Sweden. Among the eight shows, Gavin Robertson, who brought us his one-man Bond show, this time solos with Crusoe: No Man Is an Island. Paisley solos as well when he reprises the excellent Bill Clinton Hercules, and he directs Victor and Penney in Project X.
Thursday, July 16
The Addams Family
Through September 20.
Want to get dinner and a show? Get them together at New Theatre Restaurant, which promises a great buffet and a good time with this production.
KC Fringe Festival
Through July 26
Fringe returns for its 11th year with a plethora of performing and visual arts, film, dance, comedy and music events, in multiple venues around the city. Visiting artists and troupes join local artists for a wide variety of short (30-90 minutes) performances every evening over 10 days.
Friday, July 17
Off-the-Wall film series: Labyrinth
Kansas City Central Library
Irrational Man opens at movie theaters.
Trainwreck opens at movie theaters.
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Annie Warbucks
Theatre in the Park
Through July 19, also July 22-25.
After you see Annie at Starlight in June (June 19-21), you can catch this sequel in another outdoor amphitheater.
Saturday, July 18
Chipotle Cultivate Festival, with Portugal the Man
Penn Valley Park
Monday, July 20
WWE Monday Night Raw
Sprint Center
Wednesday, July 22
Van Halen, with the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band
Cricket Wireless Amphitheater
Friday, July 24
Cider Mill Century Bicycle Tour
Louisburg Cider Mill, in Louisburg, Kansas
Southpaw opens at movie theaters.
Saturday, July 25
Bubble Run
Kansas Speedway
Friday, July 31
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation opens at movie theaters.
AUGUST
Saturday, August 1
The Pitch City Market Beer Fest
The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures reopens.
toyandminiaturemuseumorg
Kenny Chesney
Arrowhead Stadium
Friday, August 7
Kansas City Comic Con, with Sean Astin
Bartle Hall
Through August 9
Shania Twain
Sprint Center
sprintcenter.com
If only we could all be so lucky as to retire at 49, like Shania Twain. After a successful two-year residency at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace, the queen of country pop is bidding farewell to the world of showbiz with a final tour titled — appropriately — Rock This Country. If you don’t still have the lyrics to her 1997 hit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” stuck in your head, you’re obviously suppressing something that just needs to be felt. Don’t forget your cowboy boots.
Fantastic Four and Ricki and the Flash open at movie theaters.
Saturday, August 8
Rugged Maniac Obstacle Race
Snow Creek Ski Area, in Weston
Monday, August 10
Royals vs. Tigers
Through August 12
Wednesday, August 12
Idina Menzel
Starlight Theatre
The Gin Game
Kansas City Actors Theatre
Through August 30.
The Gin Game is more game of wits than game of cards between two residents of an assisted living facility, who won’t go down — in the game or in life — without a fight. The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama opens KCAT’s 11th season.
Thursday, August 13
My Morning Jacket
Starlight Theatre
It almost doesn’t matter anymore what My Morning Jacket does on its albums, given the Kentucky band’s reputation for delivering transcendent performances onstage. As it happens, My Morning Jacket’s latest full-length, May’s The Waterfall, is a celebration as grand as anything the five-piece delivers in a concert setting, with dreamy, psychedelic melodies, powerful grooves and, as always, lead singer Jim James’ charismatic voice.
Missouri State Fair
Through August 23
Sunday, August 16
Jackson County Triathlon
Longview Lake, in Lee’s Summit
Thursday, August 20
West Side Story
Spinning Tree Theatre
Through September 6.
Spinning Tree Theatre revives Leonard Bernstein’s brilliant musical West Side Story, as well as Jerome Robbins’ original choreography. It’s a don’t-miss.
Friday, August 21
Foo Fighters
Sprint Center
Love Foo Fighters or hate it, you have to hand it to the band: Out of the ashes of Nirvana, drummer Dave Grohl drew together one of the most important rock backs of an era — and he switched roles, too, becoming a frontman and lead guitarist. On 2014’s Sonic Highways, Foo Fighters proved that it’s still just as loud and fierce as it has been since Day One.
Chiefs vs. Seahawks preseason football
Arrowhead Stadium
Crypticon, featuring Jen and Sylvia Soska
Howard Johnson Hotel and Conference Center
Through August 23
Arts & Crafts Fest
Screenland Armour Theatre
Through August 22
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Off-the-Wall film series: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Kansas City Central Library
Ethnic Enrichment Festival
Swope Park
Through August 23
Saturday, August 22
Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion
The “America the Beautiful” Tour
Starlight Theatre
Sporting KC vs. the Columbus Crew (with Kei Kamara)
Sporting Park
Spirit of KC Fest
Crossroads KC at Grinders
crossroadsfrontgatetickets.com
Bacon-Fest
Ameristar Hotel & Casino
Wednesday, August 26
The Oldest Boy
The Unicorn Theatre
Through September 20.
The Unicorn Theatre begins its 2015-16 season with Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy, about an American woman and a Tibetan man who must decide if their young son (portrayed by a Paul Mesner puppet) is the reincarnation of a high Buddhist lama.
Sunday, August 30
Goodnight Mommy opens at movie theaters.
September
Friday, September 4
Zombie Night at the K
(includes Royals zombie bobble head)
Royals vs. White Sox
Through September 6
Saturday, September 5
College football
Missouri Tigers vs. SEMO
Kansas State vs. South Dakota
Kansas vs. South Dakota State
Friday, September 11
Art Westport
Through September 13
Monday, September 14
Hozier
Starlight Theatre
