City Theatre is a professional

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...

company located in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

'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 Christopher Ferdinand Durang (January 2, 1949 – April 2, 2024) was an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in th ...

Adam Rapp Adam Rapp (born June 15, 1968) is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play ''Red Light Winter'' was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006. Early life Rapp was born in Chicago to Mary Lee (née Baird; died ...

, and

Jeffrey Hatcher Jeffrey Hatcher is a much-produced American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play ''Compleat Female Stage Beauty'', which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just '' Stage Beauty'' (2004). He also co-wrote the stage a ...

. Established in 1975 as the City Players under the direction of Marjorie Walker, it was originally composed mainly of

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name **Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist * Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * ...

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 The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

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 ittthe 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 Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

. 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 Actors Theatre of Louisville is a non-profit performing arts theater located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Actors Theatre was founded in 1964 following the merging of two local companies, Actors, Inc. and Theatre Louisville, operated by Louis ...

in Kentucky, and Tracy Brigden became artistic director in 2001. In addition to its mainstage season, City Theatre offers educational outreach programs such as the Young Playwrights Festival, in which selected submitted plays by students in middle school and high school are given professional productions, and City Theatre Playmakers, which provides opportunities for Pittsburgh youth to write radio dramas that are fully produced and broadcast.

References

City Theatre Company Record

City Theatre Company Records, 1973–1993, CTC.1991.01, Curtis Theatre Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh) {{Pittsburgh Theatres in Pittsburgh Theatre companies in Pittsburgh Religious buildings and structures completed in 1859 Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks

See also

References