The Fulton’s Playwright-In-Residence was the toast of Washington a year and a half ago when his adaptation of “Cyrano” wowed audiences and critics at the prestigious Shakespeare Theatre.

The legendary Michael Kahn directed the show and had great praise for Kornhauser’s clever and moving adaptation.

More recently, Kornhauser collaborated with Peter Brosius, the artistic director of the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis.

The Children’s Theatre Company won a Tony in 2003 for best regional theater. It’s the first children’s theater company to ever win the coveted Tony and Brosius is, in large part, the reason they won.

He shares the same simple philosophy that Kornhauser does about creating shows for kids. Never patronize kids. Never expect less from a show. They should and can be as fun, as interesting, as serious and as complex as shows for adults.

Kornhauser met Brosius at the Kennedy Center in 2000, when the Actors Company was presenting “Amazwi Omoya” at a theater festival. The highly physical play, in which actors play various birds, was one of the Fulton’s school tour shows earlier.

“Peter watched it and then came up to me and when Peter Brosius talks to you, you don’t forget,” says Kornhauser. “He said, ‘Kornhauser, you’re a mad man!’”

Two years later, the mad man was at the New Visions New Voices festival, also at the Kennedy Center, putting on his clown comedy about bullying, “PowerPlay,” which had few words and lots of physical comedy.

“Peter liked what he saw and he asked me if I liked Buster Keaton,” Kornhauser recalls. “He had been trying to create a Buster Keaton piece, but it kept running into dead ends. Was I interested?”

You bet Kornhauser was. Keaton was his favorite silent film star.

“When I was a real young kid, you could buy these little snippets of 8mm movies that were about four minutes long. Of the ones I collected, I liked Buster Keaton best.”

Keaton, unlike Charlie Chaplin, was totally unsentimental and stone-faced.

“The face was so blank, you could project what you wanted on it,” Kornhauser says. “Beyond that, he was so resilient. A house could fall on him, 100 policemen could chase him, but he kept going on, taking the next step forward.”

So just about the time the Children’s Theatre won its Tony and everyone in Minneapolis and St. Paul was clamoring to work with Brosius, Kornhauser began collaborating on the show that would become “Reeling.”

“My thought was that it could be an adventure that took us into a film. We’d create a typical Buster Keaton story where he would become a movie character,” Kornhauser says.

Brosius began developing ways that a movie could be created on stage, using things like slow motion and freeze frame.

“He had amazing energy and great ideas,” Kornhauser says.

“Reeling” has no dialogue, though there are a few captions projected above the stage, much like a silent film.

Instead, Kornhauser wrote stage directions and Dean Holt, who plays Keaton, brought them to astounding life.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune loved the show, saying it had “spot-on timing, deft physical humor and lots of heart.”

Kornhauser was amazed at the creativity of the design team and the flexibility of Holt.

Working with Brosius was an incredible experience.

“What was so wonderful working with Peter was how open he was in sharing. The final version of the play had bits developed by everyone, from volunteers to actors to members of the design team. Peter was a real task master, but it was a joyous process right from the start.”

Alas, don’t expect “Reeling” to come to the Fulton anytime soon. Kornhauser explains it was so terrifically complex and requires a much larger stage than the Fulton could provide, so bringing it here would be impossible.

But if you happen to be heading to the Twin Cities, “Reeling” runs through March 4 at the Children’s Theatre.

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Jane Holahan is a New Era staff writer. Her column appears every other Wednesday.

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