Throughline Theatre Company is a Pittsburgh-based theatre company. Established in 2009 by recent college graduates from Catawba College, [1] the company's mission is to "focus on the past, its impact on the present, and what it holds for the future." [2] The company produces classical plays, contemporary plays, and new works, with each season centered on a theme; [3] [4] each season includes four plays. [5] Throughline Theatre has held productions at the Seton Center in Brookline [6] as well as the Grey Box Theatre in Lawrenceville. [2]
Pittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the second-most populous city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, and the 68th-most populous city in the U.S., with a population of 302,971 as of the 2020 census. The city is located in southwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. It anchors the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.457 million residents and is the largest metro area in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is the principal city of the greater Pittsburgh–Weirton–Steubenville combined statistical area which includes parts of Ohio and West Virginia.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays not limited to Shakespeare. During the Festival, between five and eleven plays are offered in daily rotation six days a week in its three theatres. It welcomed its millionth visitor in 1971, its 10-millionth in 2001, and its 20-millionth visitor in 2015.
The Benedum Center for the Performing Arts is a theater and concert hall located at 237 7th Street in the Cultural District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Designed by the Philadelphia architectural firm Hoffman-Henon, it was built in 1928 as the Stanley Theatre. The former movie palace was renovated and reopened as the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in 1987.
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.
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, D.C. The theatre company focuses primarily on plays from the Shakespeare canon, but its seasons include works by other classic playwrights such as Euripides, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Schiller, Coward and Tennessee Williams. The company manages and performs in two spaces: The Michael R. Klein Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall. In cooperation with George Washington University, they run the STC Academy.
The culture of Pittsburgh stems from the city's long history as a center for cultural philanthropy, as well as its rich ethnic traditions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, wealthy businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry J. Heinz, Henry Clay Frick, and nonprofit organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation donated millions of dollars to create educational and cultural institutions.
Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera is a nonprofit professional theater company based in the Cultural District of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Despite its name, the organization presents musical theatre classics rather than opera. Its productions draw more than 200,000 patrons each year and its annual budget is nearly $10 million.
The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT) is an American professional ballet company based in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1969.
Quilters is a musical with a book by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, and lyrics and music by Barbara Damashek. It is about the lives of American pioneer women based on the book The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art by Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen. The show was originally developed and produced by the Denver Center Theater Company, Brockman Seawell, executive producer. It had a brief run on Broadway in 1984.
Shakespeare in the Park is a term for outdoor festivals featuring productions of William Shakespeare's plays. The term originated with the New York Shakespeare Festival in New York City's Central Park, originally created by Joseph Papp. This concept has been adapted by many theatre companies, and over time, this name has expanded to encompass outdoor theatre productions of the playwright's works performed all over the world.
Bricolage Production Company is a professional theatre company based in downtown Pittsburgh. Established in 2001 by Jeffrey Carpenter, it is located at Community Forge, an inclusive community center in Wilkinsburg, PA. The company's mission is to use Pittsburgh's "distinctive resources" to create theatre that "stimulate[s] a heightened sense of involvement for the audience." Bricolage has held readings and staged productions of numerous new works by playwrights on the Pittsburgh, national, and international theatre scene. Their immersive theatre piece STRATA was named a number one production of the year by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and was featured on the cover of American Theatre Magazine.
City Theatre is a professional theater company located in Pittsburgh's South Side. It specializes in productions of new plays and has commissioned new works by playwrights on the national theatre scene, including Christopher Durang, Adam Rapp, and Jeffrey Hatcher. Established in 1975 as the City Players under the direction of Marjorie Walker, it was originally composed mainly of Carnegie Mellon graduates and was part of Pittsburgh's Department of Parks and Recreation, performing at schools, parks, and housing projects. Initially the group shared their performance space in the North Side's Allegheny Center with Pittsburgh Public Theater. In 1979, the group was offered a residency at the University of Pittsburgh and renamed itself City Theatre. “Homeless” for a brief period of time, the University of Pittsburgh theatre department offered to shelter the theater company in 1980. Attilo Favorini, head of the department, thought that, “The City Theater offered us [Pitt] the opportunity for Pitt’s students to work a professional company.”(Steele, Bruce “Artistic Struggles -The City Theater Company: A History of Bad Luck and Good Theater” pg. 27) In addition to receiving a new troupe of professional actors, arts funding through CETA enabled the expansion of the company and the creation of the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1980. In 1981, under the artistic direction of Marc Masterson, the company moved to a new performance space on Bouquet Street in Oakland. The company again moved to a new performance space at the former Bingham United Methodist Church in the South Side in 1991, where in addition to its own season it acted as a host space for the earliest productions of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. Marc Masterson became artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, and Tracy Brigden became artistic director in 2001.
Quantum Theatre is an experimental theatre company that uses non-traditional stages in Pittsburgh, PA. Founded in 1990 by Karla Boos, it is the longest running producer of site specific plays.
Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company is a professional theatre company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 2003 by artistic director Mark Clayton Southers, the company originally held productions at the Penn Theater in Garfield and moved to a new space on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Between 2011 and 2018, it held productions in a space on Liberty Avenue in the same building used by Bricolage Production Company, as well as the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, where Southers was artistic director of theatre initiatives, and at other locations. In 2022, it moved into the former Madison Elementary School in Pittsburgh's historic Hill District.
Pittsburgh Playhouse is Point Park University's performing arts center located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It houses three performance spaces and is home to The Rep, Point Park's resident professional theatre company, as well as three student companies—Conservatory Theatre Company, Conservatory Dance Company, and Playhouse Jr. The Conservatory Theatre Company offers five productions each year that are performed by undergraduate students at Point Park; each season consists of a mixture of established plays and musicals, as well as occasional new works.
Pittsburgh New Works Festival is an annual festival where participating Pittsburgh-area theatre companies each produce an original one-act play. Established in 1990 by Donna Rae, the Festival features four weeks of productions of new plays as well as two weeks of LabWorks. The Festival has taken place in numerous locations, originally having performances at City Theatre's Lester Hamburg Studio, Open Stage, the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks, and currently Carnegie Stage in Carnegie.
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.
Stage Right! is a professional theatre company and performing arts school located in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Established in 1998 as an organization for young people to take classes in musical theatre by Chris Rizk, Stage Right! also became a professional theatre company in 1999, established by artistic director Anthony Marino, Rizk's brother. The company produces a full season of musicals, utilizing professional actors from the Pittsburgh theatre scene as well as students from their classes.
Throughline is a historical podcast and radio program from American public radio network NPR. The podcast aims to contextualize current events by exploring the historical events that contributed to them. Its episodes have outlined the history of modern political debates, civil rights issues, and domestic and international policy. The show is NPR's first history podcast.