We caught up with Stuart Carden, the new artistic director at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, in early September, not long after Kansas City Repertory Theatre made it known that the Chicago director, collaborator and “devisor” would be the fifth artistic director in the theater company’s history.

David Wayne Reed might best be described as a genre-busting conceptual artist whose work defies easy classification. Playwright, actor, filmmaker, storyteller — he wears these hats and others. But in the beginning, he was a man of the stage — a founding member of Late Night Theatre who performed, directed and contributed scripts to the gender-bending, genre-hybridizing theater company.