Meet the Past with Crosby Kemper III returns for a conversation with Edgar Snow, as portrayed by actor Robert Gibby Brand, on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 7 p.m. on the Lyric Opera set for Nixon in China in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Snow, born in Kansas City in 1905, was a journalist best known for his writings about China in the 1930s, most especially Red Star Over China, a largely favorable account of Mao and his Communist Red Army guerrilla forces. The book introduced Mao and his “agrarian reformers” to the western world and made Snow famous.

The program will be taped by KCPT for later broadcast as part of the Meet the Past series.

This event is co-sponsored by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and KCPT. Additional event support provided by the Edgar Snow Memorial Fund, Diastole Scholars’ Center, the Confucius Institute of the University of Kansas, and the Kansas City Chinese American Association.

Major funding for this season of Meet the Past has been provided by the Courtney S. Turner Charitable Trust, Ken and Cindy McClain, and the J. B. Reynolds Foundation.