Feb. 21-May 12). Museums are plagued by the symphony/ballet/opera problem: Namely, how do you interest the younger generation? Seems that many don’t care to be “interested” — but they might want to be involved. Starting with a handful of photographs from the museum’s collection, the audience was asked to respond by submitting photos of their own, which were printed and hung near the inspiration. Billed as a collaborative photography project and “not an exhibition,” this audience-sourced, um, exhibition got lots of submissions, many surprisingly good. Time will tell whether it’s the beginning of the end — though I hope not — or a new beginning.
physical-theater director Dominique Serrand to create this moving multimedia solo work. The performance transported audiences into a riveting realm of emotional loss, where physical reminders of departed loved ones haunted the living.
STEVE SUCATO’S SEVEN MOST TRANSPORTIVE DANCE PROGRAMS
{PHOTO COURTESY OF MARTHA RIAL}
Brent Luebbert and Kaitlin Dann in Attack Theatre’s Soap Opera
In a year filled with great dance programs, here are seven that transported audiences from their seats to worlds away. Soap Opera (Attack Theatre, Feb. 2-10). Soap Opera mixed dance, mythology and opera music to tell the fictitious story of a terminally ill concert pianist — and his opera-singer lover’s bedside efforts to keep him alive by reading colorful stories aloud. The work transported audiences into the stories, with the characters’ inner lives culminating in a vision beyond the veil. Pavement (Kyle Abraham/Abraham. In.Motion, Feb. 16). Pittsburgh native Abraham and his New York company re-imagined 1991 film Boyz n the Hood as a dance work set in Homewood and the Hill District. The work took its Byham Theater audience on a moving journey through Abraham’s feelings on violence and genocide within the black community. Moulin Rouge (Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Feb. 14-17). Choreographer Jorden Morris asked what would happen if two innocent people were dropped into the boiling caldron of decadence, art and bohemian life that was Paris in the late 19th century? The answer was a marvelous ballet full of Parisian history, romance and intrigue, with lots of can-can dancing. Frequency of Structure and Flow (Gia T. Presents, March 29-30). Gia Cacalano and her international troupe of improvisational dancers and musicians stepped into artist Miguel Chevalier’s digital-media exhibit Power Pixels 2013. In the process, they took their Wood Street Galley audiences on an otherworldly journey of sound, motion, color and light. Remains (CorningWorks, Jun. 5-9). Veteran Pittsburgh-based dancer Beth Corning teamed with Tony Award-winning N E W S
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Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Sept. 28). As part of the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, choreographer Marie Chouinard and her Montreal-based troupe blended drama, nudity and the bizarre in two U.S. premieres, respectively interpreting Henri Michaux’s visual art and Erik Satie’s music into cutting-edge dance. The Jazz Furnace (The Pillow Project, Oct. 12). Director Pearlann Porter repurposed an icon of Pittsburgh’s steel-industry glory days into a site-specific dance space on a gargantuan scale: Her Pillow Project unleashed its improvisational “Postjazz” movement style and video wizardry as a day-long extravaganza of dance and music, revisiting some of the troupe’s most popular works.
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LIT BRIEFS {BY BILL O’DRISCOLL}
Learning something new: City Theatre’s production of Daniel Beaty’s Breath & Imagination (March 15-31) was a joy even without the revelation that it was a mostly true story about a real guy very much worth knowing. Roland Hayes rose from tenant farmer to international stardom singing both opera and spirituals, but was caught in the Jim Crow net in his native land. Vocalists Jubilant Sykes and Kecia Lewis were superb. Cross-dressing and multi-casting: Daina Michelle Griffith is a beautiful, sexy woman who totally rocked as various men — whacked-out hipster/Nazis — in Off The Wall Productions’ The Zero Hour (Oct. 25-Nov. 9). Madeleine George’s play is a bit bony, but there’s enough meat for Griffith and co-star Erika Cuenca to create a series of engaging characters. INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M
DRISCOLL@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Jubilant Sykes (with Kecia Lewis in the background) in City Theatre’s Breath & Imagination
Decades of reviewing have confirmed over and over the wisdom of Sturgeon’s Law: “90 percent of everything is crap.” So what keeps crusty critics going back to the theater again and again? It’s the surprises. The bad ones make good party chitchat. The more pleasant reawaken the joy that reminds us why art is essential. In no particular order, here are my favorite surprises: A maturing master: Starting with his long-ago “Strindberg on a Shoestring” in a former upholstery-factory-turnedVFW-dancehall, Martin Giles’ passion and affinity for dour Scandinavians has been no secret. Fast-forward to Quantum Theatre (always a mine for surprises) and
[BOOKS]
Three new paperbacks peek into local history from very different angles. Pittsburgh has only six years on its oldest building. That gives Emily M. Weaver a substantial story to tell in The Fort Pitt Block House (History Press, 157 pp., $19.99), out just in time for the structure’s 250th anniversary, next year. Though built as a defensive redoubt for Fort Pitt, the Block House spent much longer as a private residence — including multi-family housing — and even did time as a candy store before the Daughters of the American Revolution took it over and fought for its preservation. Weaver, the building’s curator, cogently makes the most of this first comprehensive history of Pittsburgh’s first landmark. In Pittsburgh in World War I: Arsenal of the Allies (History Press, 144 pp., $19.99), Elizabeth Williams offers an overview of life here in 1917-18. Perhaps you knew that Allegheny County produced half the steel used by the Allies, and that 60,000 Pittsburgh men went to war. But the scale of mobilization Williams documents is still astounding: Most of the city’s then-vast industrial base was dedicated to the war effort, and “around 500,000 Pittsburghers were already employed in war work” before the U.S. even entered the conflict. Williams, college archivist at LaRoche College, also offers intriguing material about anti-German nativism in a city of immigrants; labor activism; the city’s nurse shortage; and how, in 1918, the local Red Cross chapter collected about 182,000 pounds of peach pits and nut shells as material for the making of gas masks (whose technology was also partly developed here). Pittsburgh Film and Television (Arcadia Publishing, 127 pp., $21.99) is, perhaps fittingly, mostly photographic images, an oddly curated bunch selected and with captions by local film-and-TV historian John Tiech. Charming photos of Fred Rogers’ early days keynote a section on local broadcast history. A chapter on location filmmaking — with lots of unpeopled, contemporary shots of Monroeville Mall (famously used in Dawn of the Dead) — feels largely superfluous. More interesting are behind-the-scenes movie-production shots, dating to the 1990s. The quality of the stills (many by Tiech himself) is variable, but it’s nice to be reminded that films including Hoffa, Dogma and The Mothman Prophecies were shot here. Bonus: trade ads from the early film industry. “Why not hitch up with a live concern and get the best that is going,” cajoled the Wonderland Film Exchange in 1908.
{PHOTO COURTESY OF HARTFORD STAGE/T. CHARLES ERICKSON
MICHELLE PILECKI’S BEST SURPRISES IN PITTSBURGH THEATER 2013
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Giles’ bold direction of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman (Jan. 31-Feb. 24) with dry wit and, yes, surprising insight. A few months later, Giles’ mercurial actor persona got its best display ever in Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre’s production of The Kreutzer Sonata (May 30-June 22), a virtual one-man show by playwright Nancy Harris adapting Leo Tolstoy. Polished nonsense: As a musical and as a play, Jake Oliver’s Viva Los Bastarditos! (July 12-27) is a train-wreck of strained credulity, clichéd characters and boilerplate songs. But No Name Players’ production was just so much fun. The energy level never fell below frenetic as the ensemble — mostly cast in multiple roles — overfilled the company’s new home at Off the Wall Theater. Perfect grace in classical drama: I’m always grateful for a chance to see and hear the works of the ancient masters, but was absolutely thrilled by Point Park University Conservatory Theatre’s Hecuba (Nov. 8-24). At the time, I praised the chorus as the best I’d ever seen, but didn’t name them: Erin Ulbert, Viveca Chow, Te’Era Coleman, Lexi Gleichauf, Linda Kanyarusoke, Aine Lafferty, Ariana Livingston, Corinne Scott, Kristin Serafini and Nicole Stouffer. Monica Payne directed them in Euripides’ tale of revenge.
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