Your Stuff. Your Story. Your Shelf Life.

Shelf Life: a modern show and telling is a live storytelling event, where people share the stories behind the weird and wonderful objects that have shaped their lives.

Shows

Winning, Election Season, Unwanted Gifts, Idol Worship, Wanderlust, Cotton, Tools of the Trade, Help!, Toy Stories, Lost and Found, Stolen Goods, Wood, Rituals, Family Traditions, Guilty Pleasures, Odd Jobs, Failure, Rock Show, Love, Mother, Time, Home, Incognito, Becoming, Protest, and Ceremony.

120

Storytellers

Including: a former NFL player, an Ironman, two Guinness Book Record Holders, a pastor, a surgeon, poets, salesmen, a hypnotist, a geologist, ex-convicts, musicians, drag queen, sex workers, band directors, RV enthusiasts, activists, and rock n rollers, and me.

134

Objects

Including: cowboy boots, a doggy door stopper, an EZ Bake Oven, a bust of Elvis Presley, 7 drumsticks from the band, Loverboy, Russian Nesting Dolls, a cuckoo clock, a smashed violin, a prosthetic leg, a vintage typewriter, Kama Sutra flocked wallpaper, a vibrator, certificate of US Citizenship, engagement rings, a warrant for arrest, and a teeny tiny Mitt Romney.

“We hope this Shelf stays fully stocked.”

Pitch, Best of Kansas City 2017, “Why We Love KC Now”

Shelf Life presents BODY

Thursday, May 1, 2025
6:00pm

Plaza Library
4801 Main St.
Kansas City, MO

David Wayne Reed

David Wayne Reed (he/him) is a writer/director born in rural Kansas, inspired by narratives of landscape, memory, transformation, and time.

Reed is host and producer of the popular ‘show and tell’ storytelling series, Shelf Life. His films, Eternal Harvest and land and flower have played multiple film festivals including Middlebury New Filmmaker’s Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, Kansas City International Film Festival, Out Here Now, Ojai Short Film Festival, McMinnville Short Film Festival, Covellite International Film Festival, and PBS.

Reed is a Charlotte Street Generative Performing Arts Fellow. He has been awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Spencer Museum of Art, the Puffin Foundation, two Inspiration Grants from Arts KC, has won multiple Best of Awards from the Pitch Weekly (including Best Actor, Best Play, and Best Filmmaker), and has been in residency at Escape to Create, Charlotte Street, and Tallgrass Artist Residency.

Reed served as Acting Chairman of the Municipal Art Commission of Kansas City, Missouri and on the Executive Committee of the 1% for Public Art program at the new Kansas City International Airport from 2020-2024.

He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Works include: Goliath, Help Yourself, Jolly Rancher, Sequoia, and Peggy and Paul at the Post Office in Provincetown. As an actor, he has appeared at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams International Theatre Festival, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Unicorn Theatre, Fishtank Performance Studio, The Living Room, Late Night Theatre, Seaside Repertory Theatre as well as several commercials and music videos.

Have a story you'd like to share?

Contact yourshelflife@gmail.com.