The Circle Game

Already this has been a great year for women playwrights in Kansas City, with Naomi Wallace’s incendiary One Flea Spare at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre and Sarah Ruhl’s clever In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) at the Unicorn. Now the Kansas City Repertory Theatre puts on Circle Mirror Transformation, the 2010 Obie winner by 29-year-old wunderkind Annie Baker, who already has four plays under her belt. With a Waiting for Guffman-like premise — an amateur acting class in a small New England college-town community center — Circle Mirror Transformation seems primed for guffaws, but instead surprises with its quiet and unexpected naturalism. (The title refers to one of several acting games — exercises in pretense and artificiality, if you want to look at it that way — that the cast performs, for real, onstage.) Theater stripped of theatricality: Find out what that radical concept looks like through March 20 at the Rep’s Copaken Stage (13th Street and Walnut, 816-235-2700). Tickets run $15 to $40. See kcrep.org.— Grace Suh

Feb. 18-March 20, 8 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 19, 8 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 20, 7 p.m.; Tue., Feb. 22, 7 p.m.; Wed., Feb. 23, 7 p.m.; Thu., Feb. 24, 7 p.m.; Fri., Feb. 25, 8 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 26, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 27, 2 & 7 p.m.; Tue., March 1, 7 p.m.; Wed., March 2, 7 p.m.; Thu., March 3, 7 p.m.; Fri., March 4, 8 p.m.; Sat., March 5, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., March 6, 2 & 7 p.m.; Tue., March 8, 7 p.m.; Wed., March 9, 7 p.m.; Thu., March 10, 7 p.m.; Fri., March 11, 8 p.m.; Sat., March 12, 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., March 13, 2 p.m.; Tue., March 15, 7 p.m.; Wed., March 16, 7 p.m.; Thu., March 17, 7 p.m.; Fri., March 18, 8 p.m.; Sat., March 19, 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., March 20, 2 p.m., 2011