Kling

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Kevin Kling has served as a commentator for National Public Radio, been named the Minneapolis Story Laureate, authored five books, written nine award-winning plays, performed at the National Storytelling Festival and Kennedy Center and starred in a Regional Emmy Award-winning Public Broadcasting Station documentary about his life. Now, this summer, he will be adding “premiered his one-man play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF)” to that impressive list.

That play, “Kevin Kling: Unraveled,” will depict Kling’s experience growing up with disability.

“In my lifetime, things have changed radically in terms of the world of disability. It’s unbelievable in my time, how disability is perceived much more as part of the community than it was. That’s not to say that we don’t have a long way to go, which we do,” Kling said, mentioning he hoped this play would honor the disability advocates who came before him.

Kling was born with a congenital birth defect in his left arm — it has no wrist or thumb and is three quarters the size of his other arm — and later, due to a motorcycle accident, experienced a traumatic brain injury and the complete paralysis of his right arm.

“A lot of this play is about navigating that loss, and humor is an important tool in the navigational tool box,” Kling said.

"Kevin Kling: Unraveled" will be performed in the Marinoff Theater at Shepherd University, during the Contemporary American Theater Festival next month. Courtesy photo

While his experiences with disability may be unfamiliar to audience members, the emotional responses related to those experiences, including the feeling of loss, will be familiar to many.

“Everybody carries loss with them. I might be talking about the loss of an arm, but I might as well be talking about the loss of a person or a potential future,” Kling said. “Loss is a universal experience.”

According to Kling, the play will particularly highlight how he has used a sense of humor to navigate the past 68 years of his life.

“If you don’t have a sense of humor and you have a disability, you’re in for a hard life,” Kling said. “Humor and tragedy sit right together. Things that often strike us as funny are connected with something that has gone wrong. And when we laugh together, we ‘re connected — it’s a point of connection. That’s a crucial element of storytelling. Storytelling, at its heart, is about how we belong and how we belong to each other. We don’t go to stories for answers. We go to stories to know that we’re in a family.”

This particular play, which intermixes elements of storytelling and theatricality together, will also include live music performed onstage by composer Rob Witmer, according to Kling. The two artists have collaborated on a play once before, which turned out so well that they wanted to repeat the experience. And they couldn’t be more thrilled that their second collaboration will be premiered at CATF.

“I’ve heard wonderful things about this festival,” Kling said. “My friends who have had plays there have had nothing but good things to say about it. I jumped at the chance, when they said they wanted to do this at CATF.”

Tickets to the play can be purchased at https://catf.org/ or by contacting the box office at 681-240-2283 or boxoffice@catf.org on weekdays, from 12-5 p.m.