Electric Renaissance — The Harlem Renaissance Comes Alive at the Blue Room
A Coterie Theatre co-production at the Blue Room — one actor, one musician, and the words of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Nella Larsen. Now playing through June 14.
Electric Renaissance
May 27 – June 14, 2026
The Blue Room at the American Jazz Museum
1616 E 18th St, Kansas City
Something a little different is on the Blue Room stage this month. Electric Renaissance is a special co-production between The Coterie and the American Jazz Museum — one actor and one musician bringing the Harlem Renaissance to life, right here in the room where Kansas City’s own jazz story was written.
Writers, poets, painters, singers, dancers — some of the most prolific creative voices in American history came out of the Harlem Renaissance. This is an hour spent in their company: the words of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Nella Larsen, set to live music and carried by a single storyteller. As the show puts it — we’re in our Jazz Era. The truths of that time, with a contemporary twist.
It runs about 60 minutes, it’s made for families with kids ages 10 and up, and it’s playing only seven times before it closes on June 14.
Performance Schedule
Thursdays at 7:00 PM May 28 · June 4 · June 11
Sundays at 2:00 PM May 31 · June 7 · June 14
(The run opens Wednesday, May 27 at 7:00 PM.)
About the Show
There’s a reason the Harlem Renaissance still hums a century later. In a few short years, a generation of Black writers, musicians, and artists redefined what American culture could sound and look like — and a straight line runs from their work to the music that built 18th & Vine. Electric Renaissance celebrates that era the way it deserves to be celebrated: out loud, in person, with poetry and music in the same breath.
It’s an intimate format — one actor, one musician, the audience close enough to feel it. The perfect scale for the Blue Room.
Written & Directed by Teresa Leggard
Teresa Leggard is a Kansas City writer, editor, poet, and playwright — Brooklyn-born, Jersey-raised, and a Spelman College graduate with an MFA from the University of Missouri–Kansas City. She serves on the board of The Writers Place, the city’s literary community center, and her directing credits read like a tour of Kansas City’s most adventurous stages: Pipeline at the Unicorn Theatre, Pass Over at Olathe Civic Theatre, and The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip and Single Black Female at KC Melting Pot Theatre. Electric Renaissance is her words and her vision — a writer’s love letter to the writers who came before.
Featuring Robert E. Coppage III
Robert E. Coppage III is an actor, producer, teacher, and improviser from Wyandotte County with two decades of stage experience. Kansas City audiences know him from Kansas City Actors Theatre’s Trouble in Mind and Skeleton Crew, and from his turn as Ennis in Broke-ology at Kansas City Repertory Theatre. Offstage, he founded Tribe U, bringing local improvisers into classrooms to teach the art form to inner-city students. For 60 minutes, he carries the voices of an entire era — and he’s exactly the kind of performer who can do it.
Music by Amber “Flutienastiness” Underwood
Amber Underwood — known on stage and on record as Flutienastiness — is a Kansas City native who set out to do something the genre rarely allows: make the flute a lead voice in jazz, not a background color. A flute performance graduate of Wichita State with a master’s from the UMKC Conservatory, she now teaches as an applied flute professor at Kansas City Kansas Community College and fronts Flutienastiness and the SoulPatrol, her contemporary soul-jazz band built on R&B, funk, Latin, and gospel. Her playing is exactly what the words of the Harlem Renaissance ask for — soulful, vivid, alive.
The Details
Tickets: $25 per person, plus a $3 facility fee that supports the mission, facilities, and programming of the American Jazz Museum. Buy: thecoterie.org or call the Coterie Box Office at 816.474.6552 (Mon–Fri, 10 AM–4 PM) For families with ages 10+ · Running time approx. 60 minutes
See You at 18th & Vine
The Blue Room at the American Jazz Museum 1616 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108americanjazzmuseum.org/blue-room
Electric Renaissance is a co-production of The Coterie and the American Jazz Museum, performed in the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District.