Theater & Arts category, Page 15

Billy Porter added to his list of Tony Award wins Sunday, taking home honors for Best Musical as producer of “A Strange Loop.” The Pittsburgh native and 1991 Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama alumnus also won a 2013 Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as...

NEW YORK — Surely many in the audience were thinking it, but “Company” director Marianne Elliott said it most directly at Sunday’s Tony awards: In the devastating two years since the pandemic hit, it “felt at times that live theater was endangered.” As in, the industry might never recover. The...

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust will no longer require masks at its theaters and facilities starting next week after the number of covid-19 cases in Allegheny County dropped below a high rate of transmission. Beginning Tuesday, guests are not required to wear masks at indoor events. The announcement came after the...

If there’s a lack of ’80s rock in your life, Split Stage Productions has a remedy. The theater company will shake the walls of Irwin’s Lamp Theatre beginning Friday with a five-night run of the jukebox rock extravaganza “Rock of Ages.” First a Broadway musical and then a movie, “Rock...

Pittsburgh’s Prime Stage Theatre is planning to bring literature to life for children and their families through its new Prime Stage Sprouts programming. The inaugural Sprouts production, “The Amazing Lemonade Girl,” is set for June 16-19 at the New Hazlett Theatre in Pittsburgh’s North Side. The play by Jim DeVita...

Kinetic Theatre is going meta with its next production, the world premiere of actor/playwright Simon Bradbury’s “The Illustrious Invalid.” The comedic romp, inspired by French playwright Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid,” will be staged Thursday through June 26 at City Theatre Mainstage, 1300 Bingham St. in Pittsburgh’s South Side. Moliere’s 1673...

NEW YORK — On Valentine’s Day 1972, a musical opened off-Broadway needing a lot of love. It was already $20,000 in debt and the reviews were mixed to poor. A decision had to be made: Keep going or give it the kiss off? The choice to continue was a risky...

Aspiring stars of tomorrow were recognized for their talents at the 31st Annual Pittsburgh CLO Gene Kelly Awards for Excellence in High School Musical Theater on May 28 in Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center. Named for the legendary song-and-dance man and Pittsburgh native, the awards recognize excellence in high school musical theater...

Pittsburgh CLO will celebrate its 76th season with six award-winning musicals and added opportunities for fun, starting June 7 with the national tour of “Jersey Boys.” The 2022 Summer of Musicals promises a showcase of national, regional and local performers. Productions will feature enhancements like a new video wall, along...

This show intermission will last about a year. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announced an extensive remodel and expansion of the Greer Cabaret Theater and Backstage Bar in Downtown’s Cultural District on Monday. It’s expected to take about 12 months. For almost 20 years, the venue has been known as being...

Saint Vincent Summer Theatre will return from a two-year pandemic intermission by presenting two familiar romps from past seasons. The theater’s 52nd season will feature the musical “Nunsense,” running June 14-19; and the popular farce “Lend Me a Tenor,” July 12-17. Performances will be staged in the Robert S. Carey...

The EQT Children’s Theater Festival returns live and in-person Saturday and Sunday to Pittsburgh’s Cultural District for the first time since 2019, following online iterations of the event during the pandemic. Now in its 36th year, the festival fosters children’s imaginations through professional theater performances from around the world. This...

The Pittsburgh Youth Chorus and Hill Dance Academy will collaborate to present a coming-of-age story told through choral ballet this month. “‘Crossings’ is a coming-of-age story — told through dance, vocal music, and spoken word — of a young African-American woman growing up ‘Uptown’ and confronting racism in her community,”...

From the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of The Temptations” covers the story of the iconic Motown super-group. The first national tour of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical comes to Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center from May 17...

NEW YORK — “A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s critically cheered theater meta-journey earned a leading 11 Tony Award nominations Monday as Broadway joined the national discussion of race by embracing an envelope-pushing Black-written and Black-led musical. Jackson’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner about a Black gay man writing a...

It’s one of the old war horses of Broadway theater and yet a play that never goes out of style. “Arsenic and Old Lace” returns to the stage this weekend as the final show of the 2021-22 season for the Prime Stage Theatre company. The play officially opens at the...

There is a line in the “The White Rose” that not only sums up what the play is about, but applies to the many atrocities human beings have witnessed throughout history. “If you don’t have the courage to speak up, then you are just as bad as the people that...

Following a two-year absence due to the pandemic, an effective vehicle for new play development is returning to the City Theatre stages on Pittsburgh’s South Side. The Momentum New Play Festival is back for a May 16-21 run featuring public readings of three new plays in progress as well as...

Do it, but do it with grace. That is the way Therese Rocco, a trailblazer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, has always lived her life. For more than four decades, Rocco overcame gender barriers and created a path for women. She was Pittsburgh’s — and the nation’s — first female...

Greensburg Civic Theatre is traveling back to 1955 and the Mississippi Delta, where the weather isn’t the only thing that’s sultry. The company will close its 2021-22 season with Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Curtain times will be 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and...

In 2019, John Noble said he was stepping away from Westmoreland Night of the Stars, the annual high school musical showcase he founded in 1997. After that year’s production, the Hempfield attorney and performer announced that he was turning over the reins to his daughter, Elly Noble Carr, who also...

Pittsburgh Opera will explore themes of race, violence and reconciliation in “Blue,” a contemporary opera inspired by current events and Black literature. “Blue” will be presented in five performances Saturday through May 1 in the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, at 980 Liberty Ave. in downtown Pittsburgh. The story...

Seton Hill University Theatre will present the Pittsburgh-area premiere of “Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea,” a 2014 play by Nathan Alan Davis that explores what ancestry means to people of color, specifically those whose African ancestors were taken into slavery. Curtain times will be 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and...

“Don’t Dress for Dinner” is a complicated play, but the Apple Hill Players don’t want audiences to think too deeply about it. The theater troupe will stage the madcap farce, replete with romantic hi-jinks and mistaken identities, from April 22-30 in the Trafford Performing Arts Center. “I think audiences have...