Theater & Arts category, Page 22
Stage Right’s operetta a safe pandemic haven for veteran Greensburg actor
The cast of Stage Right’s “The Pirates of Penzance” includes an actor who has traded the bright lights of the big city — at least temporarily — for the safety of his home town. “I came back to Greensburg last March to do a show at Stage Right that, obviously,...
Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth reborn for Pittsburgh Public Theater play
Imagine Hercule Poirot poking around Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh Public Theater’s new production, he does just that. The legendary literary sleuth Poirot is reincarnated to solve a Steel City murder. “North of Forbes,” a new commission by local playwright Tammy Ryan, is based on Agatha Christie’s first novel. It will stream...
Pittsburgh’s City Theatre collaborates on spring online offerings
Spring virtual offerings from Pittsburgh’s City Theatre Company include collaborations with local artists and theater groups in other cities. The season will open with the world premiere of a work about virologist and epidemiologist Nathan Wolfe, an early proponent of pandemic insurance, created by his playwright wife, Lauren Gunderson. “With...
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ to be adapted into stage musical
Walter Tevis’ novel “The Queen’s Gambit,” which was recently adapted into a wildly successful Netflix miniseries, is headed to the stage as a musical, Level Forward, a female-led production company co-founded by Disney heir Abigail Disney, announced Monday. The company provided few details on the show, including a creative team,...
Pittsburgh Playhouse virtual season has theater, dance, speakers
Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse will open a season of virtual productions on Saturday with a new play-reading series. The season includes theater and dance productions, the Dance Speaker Series and a re-imagined Media Innovators Workshop & Speaker Series, building on expertise gained in mounting previous online performances, according to...
City Theatre receives NEA grant to produce new play
Pittsburgh’s City Theatre is on the receiving end of a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest grant from the theater discipline in Pennsylvania. The grant will support City Theatre’s commissioned play, “The Rivers Don’t Know,” about immigration in Pittsburgh. It is part of the first...
Review: Quantum Theatre’s ‘Far Away’ brings thought-provoking theater to your living room
While live theater has struggled in the shifting landscape of the pandemic, always-experimental Quantum Theatre has taken the difficulties in stride and created a digital season. Its current production, “Far Away,” which is available for at-home streaming until March 7, flourishes within the video medium, showing a bleak, abstract portrait...
Franklin Regional students prepare for ‘Into the Woods’ with a scaled-down audienceVideo
Franklin Regional Senior High School students might be performing Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” but when it comes to health and safety, they certainly aren’t out of the woods yet. That means this year’s spring musical attendance will be restricted to the families of cast and crew members. But for...
Audience plays role in Pittsburgh’s Prime Stage Theatre’s mystery podcasts
Whodunit fans can test their detecting skills with season two of Prime Stage Theatre’s Mystery Theatre podcast series. The first episode of “The Play’s the Thing,” written by Pittsburgh science fiction/mystery author Lawrence C. Connolly, will debut Thursday, with four more following on subsequent Thursdays. “Lawrence Connolly’s Mystery Theatre podcast...
Cartoon favorite ‘SpongeBob’ is Stage Right’s next musical
A talking yellow sponge took the cartoon world by storm when “SpongeBob SquarePants” debuted in 1999. “It was on in my house ad nauseum in both of my kids’ lives,” said Tony Marino, co-founder of Stage Right performing arts school and professional theater company in Greensburg. Stage Right’s Student Company...
Greensburg Civic Theatre takes comedic, poignant look at love
Two sets of actors will play a couple at different stages in their relationship in Greensburg Civic Theatre’s production of “I Do! I Do! I Do! I Do!”, which the group calls a portrait of “50 years of love, quarrels and marriage.” The musical will be staged Friday through Sunday...
Quantum Theatre’s ‘Far Away’ presents cautionary tale of a dark future
Quantum Theatre’s upcoming production is “a surreal portrait of a descent into a hyper-partisan future we hope will never come to pass, but which has disturbing echoes of the present day,” the theater company says. That production is “Far Away,” a 2000 work by British playwright Caryl Churchill, which Quantum...
Things to do in Western Pa.: Feb. 10, 2021
The doldrums of February is a good time to hunker down at home and watch a movie. The Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival, Row House Cinema and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust have at-home streaming options, ranging from serious to silly. Also coming up are music livestreams, art and theater happenings and...
Pittsburgh Opera’s ‘COVID fan tutte’ documents pandemic production
With most of the performing arts world shut down by the pandemic, Pittsburgh Opera went ahead with its October production of Mozart’s “Còsi fan tutte.” “Every time we would tell folks we were having the performance, they would ask, ‘How are you going to do it?’” said Chris Cox, the...
Prime Stage production celebrates early activist Sojourner Truth
Prime Stage Theatre will return to its roots with a livestream performance of “Sojourner,” with Delana Flowers portraying the 19th-century women’s suffrage and abolition activist in a Black History Month production. The theater group’s inaugural production 25 years ago was another play about Sojourner Truth. ”Sojourner” is by Richard LaMonte...
High school musical season is again up in the air as pandemic continuesVideo
To stage or not to stage, that is the question for area high schools as musical season approaches. As many productions fell prey last year to the pandemic, school personnel and students didn’t think they would be facing the same challenge this year. But they are. With gathering size and...
Greasepaint Players’ ‘Beauty and the Beast Jr.’ plans livestream, live audience
Greensburg Civic Theatre’s Greasepaint Players are working on a production of “Beauty and the Beast Jr.” to play for both livestream and in-person audiences. About having a live audience, director Becky Ziegler Koch said, “People might say, ‘Why are you doing this now?’ But we thought it was important to...
Stamp honoring August Wilson will be dedicated through virtual ceremony
A Forever stamp honoring award-winning playwright August Wilson will be dedicated today by the U.S. Postal Service. The virtual ceremony can be viewed starting at 11:30 a.m. on the postal service’s Facebook and Twitter pages. “August Wilson was an American trailblazer and literary genius who richly deserves this recognition as...
Pittsburgh Opera postpones 1st-ever staging of Handel’s ‘Semele’
Pittsburgh Opera has postponed its first-ever production of George Frideric Handel’s “Semele” from February to May. The move was made “in response to ongoing covid-19 concerns, including high cases in Allegheny County and the slower-than-hoped-for vaccine rollout,” the opera said. “Semele” will be performed on six dates, May 8-20, at...
Unity native, Broadway vet Jerad Bortz stays thankful after life-changing accidentVideo
Going into 2018, Unity native Jerad Bortz had a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which was a successful career on Broadway, including 12 years with the hit musical “Wicked.” That could have changed forever in early February of that year, when a car accident left him...
Roger Berlind, Tony-winning Broadway producer, dies at 90
NEW YORK — Roger Berlind, a producer of more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals and the winner of 25 Tony Awards, has died. He was 90. He died Dec. 18 at his home in Montana. His family said cardiopulmonary arrest was to blame, The New York Times reported. The...
In ‘Ma Rainey,’ channeling the blues of August Wilson
NEW YORK — Like many of those involved in the making of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” it’s not easy for Viola Davis to summarize what playwright August Wilson has meant to her except to answer, “Everything.” Davis’ first stage role was in Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” She made...
PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh anticipates September return
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is anticipating the return of live Broadway programming to its PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series in the fall. At this point, the series is scheduled to reopen Sept. 7 with “Hadestown.” “Hamilton” will return in 2022. “We are proud to have preserved most of the originally...
Saint Vincent College Summer Theatre cancels 2021 season over covid concerns
Saint Vincent College Summer Theatre has canceled its upcoming season, citing circumstances surrounding the covid-19 pandemic. “After careful deliberation and after exploring additional performance ideas, including virtual, we found it best to suspend our 2021 season,” said Greggory Brandt, producing artistic director. “Overall, in terms of risks and expenses, we...
Little Lake Theatre patrons star in company’s holiday video
Because a live holiday show wasn’t feasible this year, Little Lake Theatre Company invited patrons to share the season in another very personal way. Organizers of the Canonsburg theater solicited holiday stories and photos that became part of “A Very Little Lake Holiday,” a video that will be available for...
