About Potluck

Potluck Productions was formed in 1995 to create more opportunities for emerging female playwrights to produce their work. The company’s goal is to produce an annual festival highlighting the best in new scripts by local (and occasionally national) female playwrights. The first production, Potluck, premiered at the Theatre for Young America and was invited for encore presentation at both Johnson County Community College and Penn Valley Community College. Since then, Potluck Productions has produced festivals around the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Under the artistic direction of founders Glendora Davis (actress, puppeteer, and playwright) and Joyce Slater (story teller, artist, and actress), and with the recent addition of D. K. Evenson (director, technical director, and actor), the company continues to grow and expand, ever holding true to its original mission. To that end, the company has produced ten festivals consisting of over one hundred short plays and monologues, and has worked with local and regional directors including Richard Alan Nichols, Jeff Davolt, M. Kate Sinnet, Barbara Houston Schaeffer, and Philip John Kinen. Over the last ten years, the festivals have touched on such subjects as breast cancer, menopause, infidelity, love, incest, AIDS, rape, and children.

Glendora Davis has been performing since her unscheduled delivery in a car on route to the hospital. Her stage credits are numerous and occasionally she appears in commercials and short films. She holds a degree in theatre and facilitates puppetry, drama and creative expression workshops. Her partnership with Joyce Slater began in 1995 when Potluck Productions was formed to provide opportunities for women playwrights. Plays written by Glendora that have been a part of Potluck Productions include: Panty Hose, Mini-Pause, The Last Protest, Big Brother Skippy, Chocolate Pie, and The Last Song at the Fairplane Bowling Palace. Glendora’s play Lullaby was a winner at the Penn Valley College Play Fest and was also given a staged reading at Johnson County Community College.

D. K. Evenson, a native of Denver, Colorado, has called Kansas City home for over 20 years since graduating from Baker University. D.K. is a Requirements Architect for the IT division of Hallmark Cards, Inc. here in Kansas City, but in his off hours he is a strong advocate of the performing arts. He is a longtime member of the Olathe Community Theatre Board of Directors where he focuses his energy on the “business” side of the arts. In 2003 he was asked to become one of the producers for Potluck Productions. D.K. has worked with most of the local professional and non-professional theatres in Kansas City, functioning as director, stage manager, designer, and actor. Some of his favorite acting credits include playing in The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, playing Max in Lend Me a Tenor, and Lord Fancourt Babberly in Charley’s Aunt. In addition to directing for Potluck Productions, he directed Talley’s Folly for Olathe Community Theatre, Spoon River Anthology for Wyandotte Players, and The Faker Experience (a weekly radio drama) for Baker University.

Joyce Slater has been acting since the age of 7, when she played an angel in a grade school Christmas production. She has continued working in the theatre and the arts all her life. She is a storyteller, actress, and pastel artist in the Kansas City area. Her current loves — other than her husband and her children and her grandchildren — are acting, storytelling, and painting. She is the former Director of River and Prairie Storyweavers and the artistic director of Storytelling Celebration. Keeping a positive outlook in life is her main goal in every endeavor.

©2007, Potluck Productions   Member of Kansas City’s
Just Off Broadway Theatre Association