Theater

Writer and performer Lissa Brennan’s new work, “Grist from the Mill: 1902,” was informed by sources including two key influences from her childhood: Pittsburgh’s steel mills and Irish murder ballads.

In the past half-century, Pittsburgh theater hasn’t seen many actors dominate local stages for as long as Bingo O’Malley did. From the mid-1970s into the new millennium, the Pittsburgh native took on a range of ambitious roles for a host of local troupes, and earned the admiration of audiences and fellow theater artists alike.

It’s easy to imagine a production of “King Lear” at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark: You can just picture the mad, dispossessed king defying his fate in the shadow of the towering, rusting furnaces.

A morbid question looms at the center of “The Soap Myth,” Jeff Cohen’s 2012 play about a Holocaust survivor, Holocaust denialism and more: Did the Nazis make soap from the bodies of Jewish people they murdered during the Holocaust?

The nationally touring play gets its Pittsburgh premiere Monday with a production starring famed actor Ed Asner.

Asner, who is 89, starred as Lou Grant in TV’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spin-off “Lou Grant”; he’s also known for film roles like playing Santa Claus in “Elf” and Carl Frederickson in the animated hit “Up.

First thing to know about this year’s Pittsburgh Fringe: don’t go looking for it on the North Side, where it's been held for the past couple of years.

Some folks had already seen it, some of them multiple times. Some first-timers studied up by listening to the cast album. Almost everybody waited online for hours for tickets. But this week, all of them began convening downtown for the Pittsburgh-debut run of “Hamilton.”

Visitors to Point Park University’s new Pittsburgh Playhouse, Downtown, are likely to be impressed. Visitors also familiar with the old Pittsburgh Playhouse, in Oakland, might well be wowed by the upgrade.

Most theater companies have an artistic director – the guiding force behind what goes on stage. But Pittsburgh’s City Theatre did without one for about a year following the resignation of Tracy Brigden, who’d held the post for 16 years.

Instead, the troupe, one of Pittsburgh’s largest and most venerable theater companies, made it through the 2017-18 season led by a team of three top administrators.

This fall will be a good time to be an arts patron in Pittsburgh. 

A director's decision to include a fictional gay couple in a local production of the play "Big Fish" -- roles that were not specifically LGBTQ in the script -- has led to the show's cancellation.

It was announced in a Facebook statement from the theater. 

Mayor Bill Peduto exclaimed in jest, "Hello, scary puppets!" as he met puppeteers costumed as tropical birds, glittery penguins and even a massive effigy of Peduto himself in the City-County Building.

Shakespeare is a staple in high school and collegiate classrooms, but the Bard isn’t always taught in elementary school.

Pittsburgh’s Classic Theater wants to change that, introducing kids to Shakespeare through week-long summer camps for children as young as 7.

A soccer player, an athlete and a drug dealer sat together in a half-circle in the center of the stage. Each character slumped in their chair, reflective and resigned, as they explained how their prescription drug addiction began.

In the audience were 9-12th grade students at Cornell High School. The district was chosen to participate in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s national 360 Strategy, being piloted for the first time in the Pittsburgh region.

One of the nation’s largest collections of theater memorabilia recently moved to Pittsburgh, which, among our bridges, rivers and legendary sports teams, is known for having the first commercial movie theater.

The Theatre Historical Society of America, or THS, opened the curtain to their new facility along Penn Avenue last month, after outgrowing its previous home in Chicago. Founded in 1969, THS is a nonprofit educational organization that collects and archives artifacts from live and film theater productions.

Doug Terranova's two droopy-eyed, tan bloodhounds love to bumble into the kitchen, slap their paws on the table and eat off other people's plates.

They've had lots of practice.