Bring your walking shoes for this humorous community theater experience in Lenexa

Mix the humor of Mark Twain with the beauty of Lenexa’s Black Hoof Park, and you’ve got the recipe for Theater on the Trail. This free program of the Lenexa Arts Council is open to everyone Oct. 9.

The community theater production showcases volunteer actors performing short pieces by Mark Twain, such as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and a selection from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

If you’ve ever been to a progressive dinner, it’s kind of like that — but for theater. The audience will watch the actors perform a story, then everyone will pick up and move to the next location in the park. That means you should bring your walking shoes and a blanket for sitting.

Lenexa has hosted this type of show several times. Another theater group brought their performances to the area from 2014 to 2017. Then in 2019, Jason Coats brought his high school students to perform pieces from their fall show.

Coats, now a teacher and box office manager at The Coterie, is also directing this year’s performance.

The format of the performance is more like storytelling than traditional theater.

“There’s no fourth wall, no illusion that we are no longer in a theater. They become different characters throughout the show by putting on a vest, putting on a hat — pieces we can easily carry with us,” Coats said. “One of my favorite quotes that really fits a show like this is from Julie Taymor, who did ‘The Lion King.’ It’s a paraphrase, but you want to give the audience just enough to let their imagination do the rest of the work.”

Performing in the park comes with its own set of challenges.

“For me, one of the biggest challenges the first time I approached this was that flexibility of space. I’m used to directing where this is my stage, and I control and can predict everything about it,” Coats said. “When you’re doing an immersive piece like this, you have to be willing to give up that control and lean into the fact that you’re not exactly sure what will show up.”

There could be a mud puddle in the performance area or a bird that gets curious about what’s going on in the park.

The material from Twain has “real kind of Midwest folksy vibe,” Coats said.

That works well with the city’s goals for the performance.

“What we’re trying this year is to turn it into a community theater experience,” said Susanne Neely, recreation supervisor for Lenexa. “The Arts Council really works on trying to offer a wide variety of art experiences for the community so that we can meet all the needs of the community.”

The outdoor setting originally came out of necessity.

“Back when we first started this, we didn’t have as many opportunities for indoor performances, so we thought, why not take advantage of the beautiful parks we have and use that as our backdrop?” Neely said.

The only performance of Theater on the Trail will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9 starting at Black Hoof Park’s Oak Shelter, 9053 Monticello Road. Bring your blankets and lawn chairs, but be aware you will have to carry them from site to site in the park. In case of rain, call 913-477-7170 to see if the performance has been moved to the community forum near city hall.