Union Station KC

Union Station hired me to produce the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium's 25th Anniversary Celebration with a two-part brief: create an immersive experience for guests, and demonstrate what the planetarium — newly renovated with adjustable, removable seating — could become as a venue for arts and culture, not just science education. The assignment, in other words, was to prove a space's second life. That's a curatorial problem as much as a production one: what do you put under a 60-foot dome that no one has seen there before?

The Work:
I designed a multi-tier program (November 1–2) of three commissioned experiences, each built with Kansas City artists and each engaging the dome differently:

Confluence — the headline performance and a worldwide first: Voler Thieves of Flight, KC's premier aerial ensemble, performing suspended beneath the planetarium dome, scored live by harpist and vocalist Calvin Arsenia (voted KC's Best Musician six years running) with live visuals by Evan Tedlock, Assistant Professor of Animation at the Kansas City Art Institute. Aerial silks, live harp, and projected animation in a room built for stars — no planetarium anywhere had staged it.

Laser Visions — an immersive laser show with Laser Lew, transforming the dome into a full-field light instrument.

Yoga Under the Stars — a guided immersive yoga flow session led by Kristen Rea with visuals by Matte Glossy, extending the program from spectacle to embodied experience — audiences don't just watch the dome, they inhabit it. Proving that environments can shape and influence our well being.

I curated the artist lineup, produced all three experiences end to end from the commissioning, rehearsal logistics in a technically unusual venue, artist coordination, and delivery and co-branded the program under Digital Dreams KC. This was my first experience as a creative director and I really enjoyed putting this together.

Results:
Every performance sold out, drawing 500+ attendees across the program in a 250-seat venue. More important than the numbers: the program did exactly what the client hired it to do - it repositioned the planetarium as an arts venue and gave Union Station a proof-of-concept for culture programming in a space audiences thought they knew. And it produced a sentence very few producers anywhere can write: I staged a performance that had never happened under any planetarium dome in the world. And it all happened in Kansas City!

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