Whim Productions, founded by Producing Artistic Director Kevin King in 2011, creates challenging and evocative queer theater. We focus on providing opportunities for LGBTQ+ theater artists to tell their own stories and share the diversity of queer experience with Kansas City audiences.
Queer theater. Whimsical edge.
Meet Our Team
Kevin King
Producing Artistic Director
Kevin King (he/him/his) is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Whim Productions. He graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in Creative Writing. Kevin is a playwright-in-residence at the Midwest Dramatists Center, former playwright-in-residence in the Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Residency program, and a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Kevin has directed many of Whim’s shows to date, including Film Classics Presents: Heaven So Far (2011), and Bad Auditions (2013). He also directs shorts in Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices. Kevin has also directed for Fishtank Theatre’s production of Every 28 Hours and Kansas City’s Project Playwright competition (2015).
His plays have appeared in the Kansas City Fringe Festival, The Barn Players’ 6x10 Short Play festival (2018), Midwest Dramatists Conference (2018), One-Minute Play Festival (2016), Fishtank Theater’s 12 Plays of Christmas (2014), and others. His short play The Swallows was selected for the 2019 William Inge Theater Festival New Play Lab. His work ranges from campy to slice-of-life realism, portrayed through a quirky, queer lens. You can check out his work at New Play Exchange.
Kevin’s acting credits include Whim’s Bad Auditions series (2014, 2015, 2016), Snowed Inn (2017), Whim’s production of After Orlando (2016), and Tradewinds Arts’ #ResistanceMatters (2019).
He lives in Kansas City, MO, with Calliope, his cat, who dislikes everyone but him.
Diane Hightower
Outreach Coordinator, Artistic Committee Member
Diane Hightower (she/her/hers) is a lesbian playwright based in Kansas City. Through playwriting, she depicts the diverse and nuanced lives of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and non-binary sexualities and identities in a positive and realistic light.
She recently made her third appearance in Whim Production’s Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices LGBTQ+ short play showcase with Lesbians Definitely Not Lost in Space (2019). Her previous plays include The Last Michigan (self-produced in the KC Fringe Festival at The Buffalo Room), Lesbian Potluck (Stories from Queer Voices, Whim Productions, 2016), Lesbians Beyond the Fringe, (Center for Spiritual Living), Pastiche (Whim Productions, a collaborative playwriting experience), Habitat (Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices, Whim Productions 2018), Uneven Space (10 minute play reading at The Living Room Theatre), and Down Deer (also at The Living Room).
She had her directorial debut at The Black Box Theatre in May of 2019 as part of a Directing Workshop led by Heidi Van. One of Diane’s main directing goals is to create opportunities for female actors as often as she can by assigning them to non-conforming roles. She studied photography at UMKC. She has been married to her wonderful wife Lisa for 22 years and together they are raising two teenage boys.
Vince Wagner
Artistic Committee Member
Vincent Wagner (he/him/his) grew up in the Kansas City theatre scene and then studied and lived in New York City for several years before choosing to make Kansas City his home. Audiences may remember him from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Inspecting Carol, and the staged reading of Paper Cut at Unicorn Theatre, A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Coterie, Romeo & Juliet at KC Rep, or in the KC Fringe hits Walls Suck, Huckleberry Finn and the Case of the Ominous Shadow, and DADA is Dead/Long Live DADA!, which he co-wrote and co-produced alongside his husband, Ian R. Crawford.
Involved with Whim Productions since 2015, Vince has acted, written, and directed over multiple seasons of Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices and appeared in readings of Kevin King’s play The Hyena Experience. He is passionate about bringing authentic queer stories to Kansas City stages and providing opportunities for queer theatre artists to creatively represent the truths of their diverse experiences.
Vince received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting & Directing from UMKC and a Bachelor of Arts in Acting from Fordham College at Lincoln Center. He balances his love for theatre with a career as a writer, editor, teacher, and public speaking coach. He lives in historic Hyde Park with his husband, their cat Scroot, and innumerable creaking floorboards.
Tony Sloan
Artistic Committee Member
Tony Sloan (he/him/his) is a theatre artist based in Kansas City. Born in the Chicago area, Tony transplanted to the West when he was a teen. After spending the latter-half of his childhood in rural Arizona, Tony moved to Utah to study theatre. He moved to Kansas City, as per suggestion of a former professor. He is happy he followed that suggestion and has opportunity to be creating in a cool and exciting town like KC as an emerging artistic entrepreneur.
Tony has been seen as an actor in Whim Production’s 2019 Alphabet Soup: Stories for Queer Voices, The Tempest (Stephano/Sebastian, Utah Shakespeare), The Laramie Project (Moisés Kauffman track, SUU), Twelfth Night (Priest, SUU), and premiered his solo autobiographical performance piece In Just My Underwear with KC Fringe in Summer of 2019. Tony also directed a production Really Really by Paul Downs Colaizzo funded by The Black Box Grant at Southern Utah University.
Tony holds an M.A. in Arts Administration as well as a B.S. in Theatre Arts with a minor in Political Science from Southern Utah University. He works multiple jobs among retail management, marketing, occasional theatre teaching, and fitness instruction. He lives on West Plaza by himself, which is exactly how he likes it. In his spare time, Tony enjoys a nice cocktail, exercise, strolling museums, seeing plays, talking to new people, and petting puppies.