By SHARON EBERSON Justin Cooley speaks in the most humble terms of leap-frogging past college, from high school to Broadway, as a “strange transition.” Most people would call his life …
The Star of ‘The Oval’ Directs His Own Work for Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company By SHARON EBERSON Even with rehearsals underway, Javon Johnson is still surprised that Sanctified i…
By SHARON EBERSON Knowing the destiny of the unwilling participants in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment doesn’t ease the heartbreak stirred by the men of Feed the Beast. Writer, d…
By SHARON EBERSON Actress Wiletta Mayer has been invisible in plain sight, without even realizing it. But that’s about change. After 25 years as a performer, the Black actress has earned…
By SHARON EBERSON Two old friends walk into a coffee shop, having not seen each other for eight years. They hug, they reminisce, they sip their coffees, they argue, they each deliver shock a…
By SHARON EBERSON
Compiled by SHARON EBERSON OnStage Pittsburgh is changing things up for the annual listing of Western Pennsylvania spring high school musicals, 2025 edition. As February begins, more than …
By SHARON EBERSON The headline of The New York Times review declared: “ ‘Trouble in Mind,’ 66 Years Late and Still On Time.” That was in 2021, when Alice Childress’s 1955 play made…
By SHARON EBERSON Christopher Jackson was asking about place to eat and things to do in Pittsburgh, and suddenly, an idea painted a vivid picture: It was of the regal General George Washingt…
By SHARON EBERSON This year marks 20 years since the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse. It also marks 40 years since actor Jay Sefton went from carefree 13-year-o…
Director Ron Daniels and historian Marcus Rediker recount the play’s journey to Quantum Theatre By SHARON EBERSON Side by side on the Zoom screen, avoiding icy streets and freezing tempera…
By SHARON EBERSON Three puppeteers morphing into one regal, fearsome Bengal tiger in Life of Pi requires harmonious teamwork, not unlike a band that has found its groove. The musical c…
By SHARON EBERSON Update on Saturday, January 18, 2025: The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust website has tickets on sale for a 7 p.m. show only. https://trustarts.org/production/98660/performance/9…
By SHARON EBERSON A magazine article that cast James Bond in a new light changed Christopher Rivas’ life. Vanity Fair wasn’t the first to write that Ian Fleming’s enduring 007 characte…
The search is on to replace artistic director, who will leave after seven years to ‘have a more expansive and personal response artistically to the world’ By SHARON EBERSON Marya Sea Kam…
By SHARON EBERSON Playwright August Wilson will be honored posthumously with the 2,799th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 at 2:30 p.m. EST. Denzel Washington…
Barebones productions will kick off 2025 with Jay Sefton’s one-man autobiographical show Unreconciled, written by Sefton and Mark Basquill and directed by Geraldine Hughes. The play, in wh…
By SHARON EBERSON Amid a sea of 2024 A Christmas Carol adaptations on Pittsburgh area stages, for the comfort and joy of my own traditions, I chose a couple that began on Friday the 13th: …
By SHARON EBERSON The Bennet sisters and their beaus have some unfinished business to attend to, two years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. So ingloriously did Jane Austen make that …
By SHARON EBERSON It’s A Musical Christmas Carol for the hat trick, in Charles Shaughnessy’s 21-year journey with Pittsburgh CLO. The UK-born 5th Baron Shaughnessy, who most TV audiences…
By SHARON EBERSON On a celebratory night of songs and surprises, Front Porch Theatricals announced the company’s 2025 summer shows, both Tony Award rivals for best musical in 1984. They ar…
By SHARON EBERSON Everything old is new again isn’t just a saying this holiday season. It’s a promise of more of what has proven popular, and in one case in particular, a welcome back. …
By SHARON EBERSON Jed Harris had declared The Odyssey for Quantum Theatre as his directorial swan song … until he was lured back by a tantalizing title. The invitation to collaborate came …
Bricolage Productions’ Midnight Radio is set to burst back on the theater scene with Die Hard N’At, billed as a “Pittsburgh-ified holiday romp” that parodies the action film and pres…
By SHARON EBERSON For those of you who give jukebox musicals a general thumb’s down, even you might find yourself giving a high five to & Juliet. Star-crossed though they may seem, i…