Christopher Rawson (born Christopher Comstock Hart) is an American writer, university teacher and theater critic.
Rawson was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His biological father was noted stage and film actor Richard Hart. His parents divorced shortly after he was born, and he was adopted by his stepfather, Jonathan Rawson. [1]
Rawson's main discipline is as a theater critic. From 1983 to 2009, he was full-time theater critic and theater editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , covering theater not just in Pittsburgh but also irregularly in New York, London and the Canadian theater festivals. In 1984, he started the annual Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh) Performer of the Year Award, now (2019) in its 36th year. In 2009, he semi-retired, continuing as that paper's part-time senior theater critic. He also appears as the occasional critic for KDKA-TV. Mr. Rawson attended Deerfield Academy. His B.A. is from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington at Seattle.
Rawson is active in several theater organizations. He is a board member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame, for which he supervises the annual nominations and balloting for the selection of new inductees. He has long been active in the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), which he has twice served as chair (1991–93 and 2007–11) and for which he has organized conferences in London, at Connecticut's O'Neill Theater Center, at Canada's Shaw and Stratford Festivals and at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2019 he was named ATCA Historian and he continues to chronicle its history through its website at www.americantheatrecritics.org. He was also a founding member of the ATCA Foundation and continues on its Board. For some years he was on the editorial board of Best Plays, the standard theater yearbook established in 1920 by Burns Mantle.
From 1968, and as Emeritus since 2018, Rawson was a member of the English faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught courses primarily in satire, Shakespeare, critical writing, Irish drama, and the work of playwright August Wilson. He came to know Wilson and his plays well through covering him since 1984 for the playwright's hometown newspaper of record. In 1999, when the eighth play ("King Hedley II") in what would become a 10-play cycle had its world premiere, in his Dec. 15 column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he was the first to name it the "Pittsburgh Cycle". Since then, the August Wilson Estate has named it the American Century Cycle, and both names are now used. Rawson is on the Board of Trustees (as secretary) and serves as program chair of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community, named for Wilson's mother, which is restoring August Wilson House at 1727 Bedford Ave. in Pittsburgh's Hill District, where Wilson lived his first 12 years and where his cycle of 10 plays can be said to have begun.
Since 2001 Rawson has produced Off the Record, an annual musical theater satire of Pittsburgh news and newsmakers which raises funds for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and other charities. In 1999, he wrote Where Stone Walls Meet the Sea, a 600-page centennial history of the Donald Ross-designed Sakonnet Golf Club in Little Compton, Rhode Island and of the summer colony of which it is a part. He and Laurence A. Glasco have written August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays (Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, 2nd edition, 2015) and their larger work, August Wilson's Pittsburgh, is expected in 2022, to be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
René Murat Auberjonois was an American actor and director.
Robert Frederic Schenkkan Jr. is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 for his play The Kentucky Cycle and his play All the Way earned the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play. He has three Emmy nominations and one WGA Award.
Jitney is a play by American playwright August Wilson. The eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle", this play is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early autumn 1977. The play premiered on Broadway in 2017.
Michael Wilson is an American stage and screen director working extensively on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at the nation's leading resident theaters.
The American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City, New York, was founded in 1972. Earl Blackwell was the first head of the organization's Executive Committee. In an announcement in 1972, he said that the new Theater Hall of Fame would be located in the Uris Theatre. James M. Nederlander and Gerard Oestreicher, who leased the theater, donated the space for the Hall of Fame; Arnold Weissberger was another founder. Blackwell noted that the names of the first honorees would "be embossed in bronze-gold lettering on the theater's entrance walls flanking its grand staircase and escalator." The first group of inductees was announced in October 1972.
Pittsburgh Public Theater, or The Public for short, is a professional theater company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After the retirement of longtime Producing Artistic Director Ted Pappas, The Public began the 2018–2019 season with a new leadership team: Artistic Director Marya Sea Kaminski and Managing Director Lou Castelli.
Gem of the Ocean (2003) is a play by American playwright August Wilson. Although the ninth play produced, chronologically it is the first installment of his decade-by-decade, ten-play chronicle, The Pittsburgh Cycle, dramatizing the African-American experience in the twentieth century. At the time, only the 1990s remained unrepresented by a play.
Richard Comstock Hart was an American actor, who appeared in film and TV productions, but was most active on stage.
The Marin Theatre Company (MTC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and professional LORT D regional theater located in Mill Valley, California. Jasson Minadakis is the company's Artistic Director and Meredith Suttles its Managing Director / CEO.
Kuntu Repertory Theatre was a primarily student-based, African-American repertory theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
The American Shakespeare Theatre was a theater company based in Stratford, Connecticut, United States. It was formed in the early 1950s by Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Kirstein, John Percy Burrell, and philanthropist Joseph Verner Reed. The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre was constructed and the program opened on July 12, 1955, with Julius Caesar. The theater building burned to the ground on January 13, 2019.
PICT was founded in 1996 by Andrew S. Paul and Stephanie Riso in Pittsburgh. PICT has emerged as a significant contributor to the cultural fabric of Pittsburgh with almost 2,000 season subscribers, and annual attendance of over 23,000. A constituent member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), PICT has garnered a yearly position on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's list of the city's Top 50 Cultural Forces. The organization's productions are consistently ranked among the year's best by the critics of the Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Pittsburgh City Paper. PICT was named Theatre of the Year-in both 2004 and 2006 by the critics of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Following the 2007 season, feature actor David Whalen was named the Pittsburgh Post Gazette's 24th theatrical Performer of the Year. As of October 15, 2014, PICT has produced 89 main stage shows, including five world premieres, seven U.S. premieres, thirty-eight Pittsburgh premieres and four festivals.
Marion Isaac McClinton was an American theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was nominated for the Tony Award for King Hedley II. He won the 2000 Vivian Robinson Audelco Black Theatre Awards, Director/Dramatic Production and the 1999–2000 Obie Awards, Direction, for Jitney, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award.
The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) is an American annual professional theatre festival held at Shepherd University, located in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. According to the New York Times (in 2015), it is one of "50 essential summer festivals". In 2016, Germany's World Guide identified the festival as one of the "Top 10 theatre festivals not to miss this summer". A representative of the Theatre Communications Group in its publication American Theatre stated that "(CATF's) forward focus has helped ... change the American theatre conversation, bringing new voices and pressing topics to the stage ..."
Theater in Pittsburgh has existed professionally since the early 1800s and has continued to expand, having emerged as an important cultural force in the city over the past several decades.
M[argaret] Elizabeth (Betty) Osborn,, was a playwright, author, theater director, critic, editor, and educator. From the 1980s to early 1990s, she was a prominent member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA). She worked for the Theater Communications Group (TCG). Osborn grew up in Gainesville, Florida, and graduated from college Phi Beta Kappa.
Nadia Alexander is an American actress. She has performed in several television series, including The Sinner (2017) and Seven Seconds (2018). She won the award for Best Actress in a U.S. Narrative Film at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival for her performance in Blame (2017) and was nominated for a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark (2019).
The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) is the only nationwide professional association of theatre critics in the United States. The ATCA membership consists of theatre critics who write reviews and critiques of live theatre for print, broadcast, and digital media. The organization is best known for its annual Steinberg/ATCA New play Award recognizing work developed and premiered in regional theaters. It also makes the recommendation for the Regional Theatre Tony Award. ATCA is an affiliate organization of the International Association of Theatre Critics. The current chair of ATCA's executive committee is David John Chávez, a San Francisco-based theatre critic. The vice chair is Cameron Kelsall, a freelance theatre critic in Philadelphia.
UNISON is a musical by UNIVERSES Theater, originally inspired by the poetry of August Wilson among others; commissioned and premiering at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a.k.a. OSF (2017).