Music Theatre Wichita will continue staging its summer season at Century II for the foreseeable future. But next year the company plans to move the bulk of its operations to the former Metro Midtown building at 640 N. Emporia Ave.

The 38,400-square-foot Judy Slawson Center for Musical Theatre will house MTW’s administrative offices, educational programming, and rehearsal space. It will also include a cafe and two small theaters that each accommodate audiences of 200 or fewer.

MTW will continue to produce five “giant musicals” in the summer, said Angela Cassette, MTW's managing director. But the new center will allow for newer or more offbeat productions.

“There's a lot of really meaningful musical theater that just can't be done in a big space like (the Century II Concert Hall),” she said. 

That includes shows still in the development stage. 

“It will allow us to do things like new work, which we have long wanted to do, Cassette said. “But you can't produce new work in a hall that seats 2,100 people.”

Smaller productions in the spring or fall may be a possibility, she said. There are a lot of details to work out still, including whether their small theaters may be available for other performing arts organizations to rent. (They’ve had inquiries already.)

Main-stage rehearsals will take place in the Wayne Bryan Studio Theatre, named for MTW’s longtime artistic director. Located in the former gymnasium, the space will feature configurable, telescoping seating for up to 200 audience members. 

The school’s original auditorium, which features a balcony and plaster proscenium, will serve as a mixed-use space that could hold cabaret performances, one-night concerts, and meetings.

Both theaters could potentially be used for productions of The Academy at MTW, the company’s educational programming. MTW reaches 11,000 youth across the state of Kansas each year, and the new center will allow the organization to grow that number, Cassette said. 

Construction is planned to begin this October with a target date for completion of October 2027. Work on the project began with asbestos remediation and mold removal. 

Repurposing a Landmark

The acquisition of the former Wichita Public Schools property was years in the making. Conversations began around the time artistic director Brian Marcum arrived and Bryan was transitioning out of his longtime role.

“We started meeting with Stan Shelden (CEO of Shelden Architecture) in October 2021,” Cassette said. “We looked at every vacant building in town, it felt like.” Properties they toured include warehouses, former churches, even the old Dillard’s department store at Town West.

The 1916 building they settled on was originally Noah Webster Elementary School. Its architect Anthony Allaire Crowell also designed the Wichita Carnegie Library at 220 S. Main St.

MTW has worked with the Kansas Historic Preservation Office to have the building added to the state’s Register of Historic Places, a process Cassette said was completed in February. The status will qualify the organization for historic tax credits on expenses related to preservation.

“The things that we wanted to do and the things that the State Historic Preservation Office wanted us to do were the same things, so that, so it really made a lot of sense,” Cassette said. 

“The ceilings are high, the hallways are wide. It's just so well-suited to everything we want to do there. And then when we walked into what was their original auditorium … we saw the plaster proscenium and caught a glimpse of the stage and thought, 'Well, this is our building.'”

A Transformative Gift

MTW’s new digs will be named for Judy Slawson, a Wichita arts booster who spent more than two decades as an MTW board member. 

“Mom was part of an amazing group of ladies that really transformed this town culturally in the early 1970s,” said Todd Slawson, her youngest son. He spoke during a gathering of donors and other community members Thursday evening. 

One story illustrates his mother’s close ties to MTW: When she died in 2021, Todd Slawson worked with Bryan to include some of Judy's favorite musicals in her funeral service. Seven MTW performers sang selections from “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” and “Les Mis.”

Slawson and his brothers gave a “transformative gift” that made the project possible, Cassette said. As of Thursday, the organization had quietly raised just over $16 million of its $25 million fundraising goal. 

Todd Slawson, who lived in Denver for 42 years, said its Ellie Caulkins Opera House is affectionately referred to as “The Ellie,” and he hopes the new center will bear the nickname “The Judy.” 

Emily Christensen is one of the co-founders of The SHOUT. She is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a recipient of an Arts Writing Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. Send her a message: emily@shoutwichita.com. 

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