Theater & Arts category, Page 14

Members of the Franklin Regional Thespians typically have a good deal of reference material when they’re looking for ideas about how to stage a play or present a character. As the group prepares to perform “Elsewhere” later this month, that material is nowhere to be found. That’s because they are...

Duquesne University graduate Kendra Whitlock Ingram has been named the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s new president and chief executive officer succeeding Kevin McMahon, who is retiring. Ingram will be the first person of color and the second woman to become president and CEO in the Cultural Trust’s 38-year history. She takes...

Movie and theater-goers are widely familiar with “Frankenstein,” the eerie tale of a scientist’s ill-advised creation of life in a laboratory. Not so well-known is that Frankenstein is the name of the creator, and not of the creation, as well as the story’s origin — how it was imagined by...

As much fun as actors might have on stage, sometimes performing is just a job. That’s not the case for those involved in the Westmoreland Performing Arts production of “The Rocky Horror Show.” “There are shows that actors do because they’re actors, and there are shows they do because it’s...

Before comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle came along, there was Lenny Bruce. Many considered Lenny Bruce to be ahead of his time. When he first hit stages in the late 1940s, stand-up comedians mostly played it safe. Politics and religion were considered controversial topics. In those...

After graduating from Yough High School, South Huntingdon native Nik Nemec pursued his passion for theater at Point Park University. After spending several years working as a stage manager for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut, Nemec is taking...

If calamity befalls Greensburg Civic Theatre’s upcoming production, they’ll know they did it right. Organized chaos is the goal when you’re presenting something called “The Play That Goes Wrong.” The award-winning comedy will be staged at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Greensburg Garden &...

Nathan Ruggles’ work as an audio describer at Prime Stage Theatre means he is responsible for bringing the visual elements of live theater to visually impaired audience members. “It’s all about making that visual imagery present and accessible to people who have visual impairment,” said Ruggles, 48, of Pittsburgh’s Mount...

Fresh from her run to the semifinals of “America’s Got Talent” Season 17, Aubrey Burchell is getting back on stage to challenge herself in a new way. The 21-year-old singer from North Huntingdon is playing Rusty in the Actors and Artists of Fayette County production of “Footloose The Musical,” running...

If you say the phrase “supermarket tabloid” to someone and ask what image comes to mind, there’s a good chance they will mention “Bat Boy,” the infamous (not to mention fictional) subject of a 1992 Weekly World News story and the poster child for the height of tabloid silliness. “Bat...

NEW YORK — “The Phantom of the Opera” — Broadway’s longest-running show — is scheduled to close in February 2023, the biggest victim yet of the post-pandemic softening in theater attendance in New York. The musical — a fixture on Broadway since 1988, weathering recessions, war and cultural shifts —...

NEW YORK — The newly restored Cort Theatre on Broadway has been renamed after James Earl Jones, becoming the second theater on the Great White Way named after a Black artist. During Monday’s ceremony included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and...

For the first time in over two decades, Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center has a new stage floor. The Benedum Center is one of the busiest theaters in the world, so the old 7,000-plus-square-foot stage had a lot of wear and tear from the past 20 years. According to the trade publication...

There aren’t many major operas that the 84-year-old Pittsburgh Opera has not performed, especially ones that have been around since 1901. But on Sept. 17, the Pittsburgh Opera will stage the company’s debut performance of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s “Rusalka” at the Benedum Center. The opera is the Czech version...

Jordan Berlin Speranzo and Nick Grosso have a passion for live theater. So it’s only appropriate that the first production they teamed up to stage shares that same name: Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion.” Speranzo’s mother Liz Berlin, rock veteran of Pittsburgh’s Rusted Root and owner of Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale,...

On Dec. 1, 1938, Pittsburgh resident and jazz composer Billy Strayhorn met the legendary Duke Ellington backstage after a show at what was then the Stanley Theater. Their musical personalities meshed, and Strayhorn’s composition “Take the ‘A’ Train” eventually became the Ellington band’s theme song. The duo also collaborated on...

Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company will join in celebrating the revitalization of the August Wilson House by staging Wilson’s “Jitney” at the historic property in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s childhood home has been renovated as a community art center. Grand opening activities will be held Saturday, with Friday’s...

NEW YORK — Three years after it closed on Broadway, the musical “Kinky Boots” returns to New York City. The show may not have changed, but the country has. The Cyndi Lauper- and Harvey Fierstein-created musical landed on Broadway in 2013 in the middle of the Obama administration, a big...

When Matt Mlynarski steps onto the stage these days, he finds himself having to take smaller steps, and being careful not to bend his arms too far. That’s because Mlynarski, 34, of Lower Burrell, in his own words, is “slowly turning into a clock,” in the form of the character...

ROME — Soprano Angel Blue says she won’t perform in an opera in Italy this month because blackface was used in the staging of a different work this summer on the same stage. The U.S. singer posted a note on her angeljoyblue Instagram page saying she will be bowing out...

There’s a lot of door slamming in Saint Vincent Summer Theatre’s upcoming production of “Lend Me a Tenor.” The frenetic action is central to the plot of playwright Ken Ludwig’s popular farce, mixing subterfuge with mistaken identity, according to SVST producing artistic director Greggory Brandt. The show will be staged...

NEW YORK — James Rado, co-creator of the groundbreaking hippie musical “Hair,” which celebrated protest, pot and free love and paved the way for the sound of rock on Broadway, has died. He was 90. Rado died Tuesday night in New York City of cardio respiratory arrest, according to friend...