Bill O'Driscoll

During the coronavirus shutdown, most arts groups are exploring online programming. City of Asylum is rolling out what it calls the region’s first shared programming channel.

The Pittsburgh Fringe Festival is an ambitious grassroots undertaking. Since 2014, it’s been a showcase for storytellers, theater troupes, musicians, and others from around the country and beyond, largely in borrowed and repurposed venues like coffeehouses, churches and even the back rooms of bars. 

A massive federal program to aid small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic still isn’t helping the smallest, or those owned by minorities, critics in Pittsburgh and elsewhere said.

Since 1970, April has been the month for Earth Day. But while the coronavirus pandemic has pushed Pittsburgh’s official, in-person Earth Day festivities to August, organizers have cultivated a virtual alternative for collectively celebrating nature and the need to protect it.

Just weeks ago, experts were still debating whether masking in public truly helped slow the spread of the coronavirus. Then, on April 3, came the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that anyone leaving home wear a facemask. In Pennsylvania, the order came from Gov. Tom Wolf’s office the same day. Now masks are practically a mandatory accessory.

In normal times, theater-goers, music fans, and dance aficionados sit elbow-to-elbow in darkened halls for hours. Art-lovers crowd into gallery openings, spearing cheese cubes off plates and sipping merlot poured from the same bottle, one after the other.

It’s been less than a month since nonessential businesses shut their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, but already the familiar mingling that accompanied art experiences seems almost surreally a thing of the past.

No one wants to be laid off, but the situation is even worse for tipped workers like restaurant servers and bartenders. In most states, including Pennsylvania, such workers receive a subminimum wage that’s a fraction of what even a minimum-wage employee gets.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic – and stay-home orders from government officials – many people are not leaving their houses, let alone booking hotel rooms. Still, the drop in occupancy rates for hotels in the Pittsburgh region has been swift and staggering.

Governor Wolf’s order to suspend for two weeks all dine-in service at bars and restaurants in the state to slow the spread of the new coronavirus is already taking its toll on service workers. Local restaurateurs report decreased hours and layoffs because of the rule, which limits restaurants to take-out service.

One of the first arts groups in Pittsburgh to cancel events because of the COVID-19 pandemic was Bricolage Production Company. About 2 p.m. Thursday, the theater troupe announced it had canceled this weekend’s installment of its long-running storytelling series WordPlay.

Dr. Azra Raza has many stories to tell about cancer and its treatment.

Joan Crawford was one of Hollywood’s top stars for decades. 

Glassmaking has certainly changed since humans started doing it, about four millennia ago. But while making art from glass is still a fairly artisanal process, that’s changing, too, as seen in a new exhibit at Pittsburgh Glass Center.

Bodiography Contemporary Ballet has grown a lot since Maria Caruso founded it two decades ago. In recent years, Caruso has increased focus on her solo work.

“The world is not tender with Black women,” write Deesha Philyaw and Vanessa German. “And we are not always tender with ourselves, or with each other. Pittsburgh, in particular, is not known for tenderness where we are concerned.”

Just like the news these days, the new opera “The Last American Hammer” is more than a little absurd, and more than a little tragic.

The impacts of climate change – what many environmentalists now call “the climate crisis” – are so vast they can be hard to grasp. Australia ablaze, coastlines disappearing beneath the sea, and climate refugees fleeing drought, famine and flood are just the start of a process that’s already reshaping human civilization.