Eboni Fondren: Press

Look for Eboni Fondren on the Cover of KC Jam Ambassador Magazine with the one and only Everette DeVan!

Disease, drug addiction, love and sexual freedom are just some of the problems that plague the characters of the Pulitzer Prize winning play “Rent.”

The worldwide phenomenon that made its debut on stage in 1996 is now being performed by The Barn Players at the community theater located in Mission.

Patrons are flocking to the theater to see the production, with most performances selling out.

Loosely based on Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” “Rent” is the tale of a group of young, starving artists living in New York during the late 1980s.

The story begins with two male friends sharing a loft and living in poverty: Mark (Justin Dehmer), an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger (Robert Hingula), an ex-junkie musician living with A.I.D.S.

Their former roommate and now landlord Benny (Bradley Rose) promised they could live in the artist space rent-free, but is now threatening to evict them unless they can come up with last year’s rent.

When rent is due and you don’t even have the money to buy food or heat your apartment, you know you are living life on the rocks. Mark and Roger are being beaten against the rocks.

The pace of “Rent” really picks up early when Mark and Roger’s friend Tom Collins (Matthew King) stops by for a visit with a lively drag queen he’s fallen in love with named Angel (Bryan LaFave). Angel is an extremely likable character and LaFave does a brilliant job bringing her to life.

While Mark is tormented by the thought of his ex, Maureen (Mackenzie Zielke), and her new girlfriend, Joanne (Eboni Fondren), Roger has his own torments.

More than a year earlier, Roger’s girlfriend told him they had A.I.D.S. and she slit her wrists. So, when Mimi (Linnaia McKenzie), an ill druggie stripper who takes a liking to Roger, tries to woo him, he rejects her. But she is persistent and reminds him that there is more to life than waiting for death.

The anthem for all of these characters is “No day but today.”

They might only have a day left, but they each are learning how to live it to the fullest.

This cast really does an amazing job. They are enthusiastic and give a great performance.

It should be noted this play is not for children. It deals with very adult content.

The Barn Players were very advantageous for taking on a production of this scale. “Rent” has been performed at theaters around the world, the set is complex and the characters are not easy to portray.

But thanks to the boldness of the production team, this Broadway classic has been brought to KC for us all to enjoy.

Remaining performances are Friday, Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays, Nov. 13 and 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees Nov. 14 and 21 at 2 p.m.

Tickets $15.00 with discounts for groups of 10 or more, seniors and students. For information and/or reservations call 913-432-9100, or go to www.thebarnplayers.org.

It is highly recommended that you reserve your tickets in advance. Many performances are selling out.

Behind The Scenes:

Wrapping up the theater’s season with the hit “Rent,” Artistic Director Eric Magnus said The Barn Players has had an incredibly successful season.

“Our average attendance is up over last year, the number of actors auditioning and director applying are also up,” Magnus said. “The quality of our shows have been quite good this season, and much more consistent than in past years.”

President of The Barn Players Board of Directors Vida Bikales agreed and added that this season was exciting.

“We are steadily increasing our numbers of not only patrons but also in people auditioning for our shows,” Bikale said. “This tells us that our slate of shows is attractive and that our reputation is solid. We have been able to develop some new friends within the community that have also helped us reach a new demographic.”

Magnus said “Rent” was chosen as the official season finale because he has been a fan of it for nearly 15 years.

“There is something about this show, these characters, the music and lyrics that touches the heart and soul,” Magnus said. “Jonathan Larson wrote this show from people he knew and events that came right out of his own life. It’s a very personal show that speak so clearly about relationships, love and the community as a family.”

Months of pre-production work with an inventive and creative production staff went into the production in addition to seven weeks of rehearsal. Rehearsal alone was five nights a week for three hours a night.

“This cast is the most exciting part of this production,” Magnus said. “Their sheer talent and enthusiasm for this show is infectious. Working with each and every one of them has been one of the highlights of my life as an actor and director. They have such joy and love for what they are doing, that I want to run up on stage and sing with them every night during ‘Seasons of Love.’”

Bikale is also very enthusiastic about the performers.

“Rent has brought a new, young and ethnically diverse troupe of actors to The Barn,” she said. “With them come new patrons to our audience. We love increasing our Barn family!”

Bikale said the variety of performances, the accommodations and the experience of going to The Barn sets it apart from other theaters in town.

“Every show has a different look and feel,” she said. “Directors have the opportunity to change the configuration of the stage and also the audience. This, plus the intimacy of our theatre help give the audience a unique theatre experience.”

Recreating Rent, Jonathan Larson’s modern classic rock opera about life on the edge, is an ambitious task to be undertaken prudently—and urgently at the same time. It takes a certain emotional adrenaline to drive this dark and uplifting musical drama, to create a world in which meaningful connection is always possible, but any dream could die tomorrow: No day but today. This month, the ensemble at the Barn Players Community Theatre, as directed by Eric Magnus, staged a youthful production with heart—and a real heartbeat.

For Larson's loose retelling of Puccini’s La bohème, The Barn’s stage was appropriately intimate, and the singing talent—backed by a five-piece band—is impressive, if a bit uneven. As frontman Roger, Robert Hingula (a labor lawyer by day, folks) displayed all the chops needed for the role and more. Justin Dehmer (Mark) and Linnaia McKenzie (Mimi) held their own, but only match his power on occasion. The same was true for Mackenzie Zielke (Mark’s ex, Maureen), who shined in her Act One solo, but couldn’t quite keep up with Eboni Fondren (Joanne) in their signature showdown, “Take Me or Leave Me.” With his charismatic presence, Bryan LaFave was well cast as Angel, and soulful-voiced Matthew King (Collins) rivaled Hingula for most confident (and competent) vocal performance.

Music director Kevin Hershberger deserves credit for the seamless ensemble numbers; when the 19-member company sang together (or, more specifically, in four-part harmony, in the round, etc.), the result was soundtrack worthy. In particular, Chris Burke and Kevin Rehrer—as well as Abby Schultz and Keron Wright, featured vocalists in “Seasons of Love”—stood out for their brief but memorable solos.

Tiffany Garrison-Schweigert’s limited set of scaffolding and graffiti-and-poster-covered backdrops was faithful to the original, serving primarily as a framework for the ensemble characters that were fluidly blocked by Magnus into the background of the majority of scenes. Their costumes (overseen by Deb Winstone) seemed colorful and authentic enough—though my companion at the performance noticed some of the cast wearing True Religion jeans (retail price: $200-400 per pair), which sort of broke her starving-East-Village-artist suspension of disbelief.

Rent is a soundtrack musical—nearly perfect on the CD, but on the stage not as much. The music is literally stirring; throughout the sold-out house of 150, heads are bobbing, lips are moving in sync to the lyrics. If anyone in the audience didn’t know this libretto by heart, they were sitting next to someone who did.

Without the particularly remarkable vocal polish of, say, originators Idina Menzel or Daphne Rubin-Vega, the cracks in the storyline become much more apparent. Some of the characters’ relationships (and particularly their interrelationships) are confusing, scenes seem disjointed, and at times the sung dialogue—even as it scans slickly to the robust score—is clunky and clichéd. (In this production, Magnus’s direction tries to make up for some of it, with a little tongue-in-cheek staging and well-timed focus shifts.)

I have always believed that, had Larson not died the night before the show’s off-Broadway debut, he and others would have made significant improvements, particularly to act two. I know that is blasphemy to the millions of fans who see Rent as the perfect rock opera, particularly the teenagers who grew up loving it as their own. It landed on Broadway with such a bang in part because it carried a voice largely unheard on the Great White Way and confronted issues—homelessness, homophobia, social disorder, and disease—that spoke to and about a newer generation. It confronted and celebrated the fragility of the here-and-now, and it did so here and now, not in the abstract or set in some distant time on some distant continent.

Watched from the other side of the late-‘90s boom and the subsequent bust (not to mention all that's happened since, like the rise of the Internet, 9/11, two long, ongoing wars, Facebook, etc.), Rent is striking as a period piece. I had forgotten what a major presence pay phones are in the show. Though Bohemia still isn’t dead in 2010, the rousing tribute to “La Vie Bohème” that ends act one feels a bit dated.

Does the trouble in believing that Rent’s motley bunch of nonconformists could blossom into such a tight-knit community in a matter of moments (or even 525,600) represent a flaw in the world Larson created, or in the one we live in now, where we make “friends” with the click of a mouse? Prompting such self-reflection is what makes good art, dated or not, ever relevant.

The ensemble, it seems, has no such qualms. It’s obvious onstage (and from the offstage enthusiasm, after the performance) that these cast members—most of whom were children when Rent debuted—have fully bought into the show’s enduring pertinence and message of immediate connection. For them, “There’s only us, there’s only this…”

“Kansas City, Here They Come: A local group hopes to mine the town’s rich jazz history for tourism” by Kirk Silsbee


Only four American cities have contributed distinct styles that account for separate epochs of jazz history: New Orleans, Chicago, New York and Kansas City, Missouri. Other cities, like Los Angeles, have provided innovation, styles of playing and great musicians, but not formal devices that define eras. The brand of swing that emerged in K. C. in the 1930s reflected the town itself: set foursquare into a 4/4 beat and blues-based, yet with a mobility and drive—in both ensemble and soloists—that swung harder than bands heard elsewhere. Its greatest instrumentalists were all great blues players: trumpeters Buck Clayton and Hot Lips Page; tenor saxophonists Lester Young, Ben Webster, Herschel Evans, and Dick Wilson; alto saxophonists Buster Smith and Charlie Parker; pianists Jay McShann, Mary Lou Williams and Count Basie.

So it’s no surprise that some civic leaders are now trying to find ways to turn this legacy into tourist dollars. What is surprising is that opposition looms. The struggle represents larger social, political, economic, and even musical battles within the city.

In K.C., on the last morning in August, local political figures, community activists and representatives of no less than 16 area jazz organizations convene with the idea of turning the city into an international tourist destination. The scene is almost surreal, as the press conference takes place on the miniature baseball diamond in the Negro Leagues Museum on 18th Street. Amid life-size bronze figures of nine “black ball” immortals, this grass-roots coalition-brought together by Cultural Convention & Visitor Services director Anita Dixon--recognizes that the combination of Kansas City jazz and barbecue as the city’s brand to attract tourists. Proponents say the plan, if carried out, would pay for the redevelopment and upkeep of the historically black Twelfth Street District.

“You go anywhere in the world and ask people about Kansas City, and they’ll tell you jazz and barbecue,” asserts Shar (pronounced “Cher”) Valleau, a petite, well-groomed woman who’s part of the Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors. This 25-year old organization produces concerts, gives out music scholarships, and provides assistance to artists and their families. In the space of about three minutes, she’s galvanized the assembled group, not with fiery rhetoric, but with a measured, articulate outline that makes sense to everyone in the room.

“If we present a simple, cohesive, memorable brand and then carry it through, everywhere—from the airport to the borders—you see jazz, jazz memorabilia, the names of the legends who are still being emulated everywhere in the world,” she says. “Kansas City is the only place I’ve seen that refuses to hug itself, even as the rest of the world embraces us.” She asks the group to leverage K.C.’s jazz legacy as a way of acquiring income to support the expansion of programs, economic development and improvements to infrastructure. “We cannot continue to go into the pockets of our tax base to ask them to support these things,” she says. “We don’t have to. We’ve got a story to tell, we have dollars to invest, and the return on those dollars is tourism, and it will come in big!”

As the group filters out of the Museum, on the sidewalk across the street is another retinue of political and corporate people. While Dixon’s press conference had been announced several weeks earlier, this hastily-arranged “rump” conference was put together by a faction centering around the Jazz Development Corporation. This group stages its own yearly event, the Rhythm & Ribs Festival, but it doesn't advocate building up K.C. tourism through jazz. Indeed, although impresario George Wein (founder of such famed celebrations as the Newport Jazz Festival, L.A.’s own Playboy Jazz Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival) has expressed interest in staging a yearly Kansas City jazz fest—something Dixon and her cohorts would welcome—the JDC takes a proprietary posture against an outside like Wein.

Dutch émigré Adry Fisher Lambert is the general manager of the nicely-appointed Quarterage Hotel, in the trendy Westport area. It’s an area with lots of nightlife and shopping that attracts young people. She’s been a jazz fan since her teenage years, when the Marshall Plan was aided—on a spiritual/emotional level—by the touring American jazz orchestras and bands that bolstered morale in post-World war II Europe. Lambert has even staged a jazz festival in Botswana. Driving through the town, she remarks, “This city has so much to offer,” notes Dutch émigré Adry Fisher Lambert, general manager of the nicely-appointed Quarterage Hotel, later on as she drives me through town. Her hotel is in the trendy Westport area, which boasts a lot of nightlife and shopping that attracts young people. She’s been a jazz fan since her teenage years, when the Marshall Plan was aided—on a spiritual/emotional level—by the touring American jazz orchestras and bands that bolstered morale in post-World war II Europe. Lambert has even staged a jazz festival in Botswana. “I can’t understand how people can be so small-minded and not want to let the rest of the world know about what’s here.”

While the music’s modern developments have not been lost on the town’s jazz musicians—trombonist/composer Bob Brookmeyer, alto saxophonists Gary Foster and Bobby Watson, guitarist Pat Metheny, singer Karrin Allyson are all from the area—present-day K.C. jazz shares a few characteristics with its historic antecedents. This is not the place to hear fragile chanteuses or academic exercises in long form tedium. Audiences here like their jazz swinging and, whenever possible, loud.

Local musical flavors offer plenty to savor. Midweek at Jardine’s, a restaurant and jazz club on Main Street, the room is packed for singer Megan Birdsall. Pianist Greg Richter, who also arranges, leads the rhythm section in some tasty treatments, like an up-tempo “Norwegian Wood.” His background as drummer and vibraphonist may explain his forceful attack on the keyboard. In any case, L.A.’s own Catalina Bar & Grill and Jazz Bakery should have such strong Wednesday-night turnouts for local artists.

Mind you, K.C. is no jazz backwater. Not even Los Angeles has a service group like the Coda organization, which buries musicians and their spouses who can’t afford such arrangements; at press time, it had paid for 40 such last rites. “In L.A., nobody looks out for you,” laments transplanted Angeleno alto saxophonist Bobby Bryant Jr., after asking me about a well-known L.A. drummer, just before taking the stand at The Phoenix bar at Eighth and Central. “He got sick and got behind in his house payments, and they put him out on the street,” Bryant continues. “I heard he was homeless for awhile. I think he’s in a home now over on San Vicente.”

Another rare feature of Kansas City jazz are the late night jam sessions that happen every Saturday and Sunday, from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., at the Mutual Musician’s Foundation on Highland. It boasts two simultaneous jams on two floors. A few hours earlier on the night I attended, the quartet of saxophonist Dennis Monroe, pianist Everette Freeman, bassist Tyrone Clark and drummer Mike Warner had backed bel canto singer Lisa Henry at the Blue Room on 18th. They played raucous blues for her like “I Want a Big Fat Daddy” and a luxurious “At Last.” But at the Foundation, they roll up their sleeves on modal tunes by Coltrane and Cedar Walton and some like-minded originals. The room began to slowly fills with people who appeared to be college age and older. This is the Westport demographic: all colors, men and women, young, hip and thirsty for some after hours music.

Earlier that night, singer Eboni Fondren sang standards with organist Everette DeVann’s band at the Drum Room of the Presidents Hotel on Baltimore Street. The tall, striking beauty was sheathed in a satiny dress that had next to nothing for a back. A savvy manager could mold her into a headliner. At the Foundation, however, she wears jeans and a pullover top. Sitting in a corner, sipping a beer, she muses about her passion. “I don’t really care if I ever get discovered or make a record,” she says. I just love to sing jazz and I love to sing it the way they like it in Kansas City.”

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L.A. CityBeat, Sept. 28, 2006