DG National Report: Pittsburgh by Gab Cody
@dramatistsguild @GabCody
As we approach 2015, I look back on the 2014 Pittsburgh theater year with great enthusiasm. Several companies are leading the way in developing new work and providing opportunities for writers. It’s a great time to be a dramatist in the City of Champions.
Here’s where we find ourselves:
The institutions: The Pittsburgh Public, City Theater, The Pittsburgh CLO and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Touring Program continue to thrive, presenting productions of work that has gained national attention, giving Pittsburghers the opportunity to see plays and musicals that met with acclaim in New York and on the West Coast. The biggest shift in the institutional theater scene, however, has been at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture. A group of concerned artists led by janera solomon (Executive Director at the Kelly Strayhorn/Dance Alloy) and Terrance Hayes (local poet and professor who this year received a MacArthur “Genius Grant”) worked with local foundations to save the center from insolvency and repurposing. Though the process of reclaiming the center has been fraught, it has thrust the needs of Pittsburgh’s artists of color into the spotlight. By examining the failure of the institution, Pittsburgh has been forced to acknowledge inequities and is working with diligence and purpose to rectify those inequities by providing opportunity and support buoyed by a vision for a sustainable future.
The Locals: Pittsburgh is home to many mid-sized companies who present the work of national and local writers in turn. One of the longest-lived of these companies is Pittsburgh Playwrights. With founder Mark Southers at the helm, Pittsburgh Playwrights focuses on local writers, local directors and local actors. DG Member Kim El’s bio-play Straightening Combs premiered at Playwrights and has subsequently been produced around the country including at the D.C. Black Theater Festival this spring. The Pittsburgh Playhouse (the professional company associated with Point Park University) produces at least one local writer per season. Award-winning DG playwright Tammy Ryan describes the Playhouse as her “artistic home.” The Playhouse produces Ms. Ryan’s work every (or every other) season, providing an essential step in her developmental process. There are too many other companies to mention here that are working to present readings, workshops and occasionally full productions of local work. There’s even the beginning of a Playwright Collective whose focus will be playwrights supporting and producing the work of other playwrights (they’re using 13P and Workhaus Collective as models).
The Vanguard: Increasingly, Pittsburgh has become home to radical theater thinkers and is a playground for the post-post-modern set. The combining forces of charitable foundations and Makers coming out of educational programs like the Carnegie-Mellon MFA in Art have set in motion a renaissance of revolutionary thinking. Cross-disciplinary partnerships are on the rise as evinced by the upcoming collaboration between the Mattress Factory (museum of contemporary art) and Karla Boos, the visionary behind the site-specific company Quantum Theatre. Ms. Boos and an artistic team will collaboratively devise a site-specific work inspired by Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s book, All The Names. This production will follow their sold-out summer production of the classic 1980’s immersive work Tamara, produced at the National Historic Landmark Rodef Shalom Temple. Ms. Boos speaks to the life of the contemporary theater writer: “All opportunities that put writers in a context with other theatre artists are surely good – like what Bricolage Production Company does with B.U.S. I feel the limitations of plays written by writers alone these days, without directors and performers in the process – relative to my own theatre-making, that is.” Bricolage Production Company (full disclosure: I serve as lead writer on their collaborative, immersive work) is indeed at the forefront of the immersive, experiential theater movement and their new work provides challenges for the writer and the audience participants. Jeffrey Carpenter and Tami Dixon, the adventurous leaders of Bricolage, have set a mission to re-define immersive and site-specific theater and in doing so have managed to not only build a new audience but also build a congregation of artists who share a new vision. STRATA, their immersive urban adventure, spawned an avant-garde dance performance (created by Alexandra Bodnarchuk) and an immersive estate sale – Ayne Terceira’s Her Things. I discovered an apt descriptor of the Pittsburgh theatre scene when I was researching Shostakovich’s work for a new immersive project we’re putting together: Gesellschaftbildende Kraft or “community molding power.”