By SHARON EBERSON

City Theatre has answered the question, “Where to begin?,” as it launches its 50^th season this weekend, with the official opening of POTUS or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.

That other big question – What’s next? – is ongoing, as Pittsburgh’s prominent new-play theater celebrates one milestone and keeps its eyes on the road ahead.

POTUS, a three-time Tony Award nominee in 2022, fulfills City’s ongoing mission of producing and nurturing new and brand-new works, and finds the South Side company on trend nationally: The New York Times notes, for the second year in a row, the most-staged play in America will be What the Constitution Means to Me (at City last season) and finds the uproarious POTUS, Selina Fillinger’s farce about women trying to overcome a male president’s scandals, taking its place on the list at No. 7. 

The super seven City Theatre cast includes veteran performers such as stage and screen star Tamara Tunie and Tami Dixon, of Bricolage Productions and South Side Stories Nos. 1 and 2.0 at City. 

They are joined by Lara Hayhurst, returning after her tour de force in An Untitled New Play By Justin TImberlake, and star of Pittsburgh CLO’s Who’s Holiday!, along with uber-busy Pittsburgh actresses Theo Allyn and Saige Smith. Missy Moreno, a force of nature often seen at Arcade Comedy, is making her City debut in POTUS. Also new to City and rounding out the cast is New York-based Amelia Pedlow.

POTUS is on the Mainstage through October 13, 2024, within a few weeks of, in case you haven’t heard, a USA presidential election. 

The unseen president of the play may remind people of one leader or another, but it was inspired by, the playwright has said, reactions to the Access Hollywood Trump tape. 

“Around that same time, the abuses of other powerful men were also being exposed. … When the data revealed that white women had voted for Trump en masse, I started to think hard about the ways in which we are complicit in our own subjugation, and the subjugation of others. That was when the play’s message … went from being a screed to a battle cry,” Fillinger told Speakeasy Stage.

“It’s not based on any one president,” said  Clare Drobot, who with Monteze Freeland is City’s co-artistic director. “The walls of the set are covered with presidential portraits, and obviously none of them are female. So there’s this kind of omnipresent presence of the patriarchy, and it’s a kind of overthrowing of that presence.”

One thing all can agree on: It’s for adult ears only. 

When it was suggested that the plot sounds a bit like the movie 9 to 5 but with R-rated language, James McNeel, City’s managing director, countered that, “If you’re not offended by watching Veep, you won’t have any problem watching this show.”

City’s subscription season is getting underway with other events in the starting gate.

Something old and something new this golden anniversary season includes the City Rewinds reading series of previous productions, opening Monday, September 30, with the popular comedy Hand to God, featuring its original City Theatre cast. The company also is in gear for productions of the winning plays from the 25th annual Young Playwrights Festival, at the Lillie Theatre October 19-20, followed October 24-November 2 with a dip into the Halloween season, Ghosted: Tales from Carson.

“It’s really a storytelling event,” Drobot said of Ghosted. “Monteze and I have written ghost stories, and we’re working with Brian Siewiorek  from WESA/WYEP as an emcee and DJ extraordinaire and then two storytellers …”

The three City leaders gathered in the company’s lobby agree it is OK to reveal the storytellers as rapper and activist Farooq Al-Said of 1 Hood Media and Shannon Williams (Dial M for Murder, Pittsburgh Public Theater).  

“So it’ll be an event that will move around City’s campus and have some surprises, some thrills, some chills,” Drobot said. “I think it will invite people into the Halloween spirit, which is so rich and deep in Pittsburgh, and allow them to have an adventure that is outside of the typical theatrical canon.”

While the question of “What’s next?” looms for all performing arts organizations, the company’s staff also continues to look back, combing through City’s past at the University of Pittsburgh Archives, and sharing some of their findings on social media. The research has them thinking not just of their own corner of the South Side, but of the vibe in the city, back in the day.

“As we delve further into research about the company, and certainly from both the knowledge that Marc [Masterson] had and a number of board members, something happened in 1974 and ’75 in Pittsburgh that changed the landscape of the city,” said Drobot. “It’s not just our anniversary,” she said. “We’re talking about the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh Public Theater, and about Kuntu Rep, all of these companies that were founded 50 years ago and built the arts community here. And so it feels like a good challenge to say, ‘OK, great. This happened to transform the city of Pittsburgh then. How are we part of what the landscape will look like in the future?’ ”

Drobot was seated alongside Freeland and McNeel, all partners in answering questions that dictate the company’s present and future.

Here are more highlights of that conversation.

MORE ON ‘POTUS‘

QUESTION: Starting the season this close to an election and picking POTUS as your opening show, was that very conscious …?

MONTEZE FREELAND: Extremely conscious, but also, when you really think about 1974 and ’75, women were the ones who started these institutions and who really came to the forefront and said, ‘We need art.’ Dr. [Vernell] Lillie [Kuntu], Marjorie Walker [City], Joan Apt [the Public], they all started these institutions. And so 50 years later, we are honoring women at the top of the season, it only made sense. … What happened two months ago with Kamala Harris becoming the nominee, we didn’t expect that. We were having a different conversation a few weeks before, about whether or not the show would bring up any type of ill feelings, thinking about the assassination attempt. And yet the show is still relevant, if not more relevant.

DROBOT: We are a theater that’s dedicated to contemporary storytelling and in this moment, it feels so relevant and yet it’s a way to laugh and to have joy and find a way to come together, even though I think there’s some pointed comedy in it. It just felt like this perfect way to, rather than ignore the elephant in the room, embrace it, and also double down on our values … And it also offered all of these roles for the amazing women who are part of the Pittsburgh community. 

onSTAGE: What’s the atmosphere been like, having these women in a room together, bringing this play to life? 

DROBOT: It’s just kind of wonderful to have built this community around the show, and I think there is a sisterhood to it.

FREELAND: I think it’s just that we haven’t had a show in our space for a few months. So they’re bringing back that excitement and that bubbling energy, and giving us our reminder of our ‘Why.’ As I looked at them on the stage the other night, I’m like, ‘This is why we do this’: representation. Thinking about women in comedy, which is, it’s a shame to say it, but it was taboo in some sense. Fifty years ago, when also Saturday Night Live started, there were women in comedy, and people were rioting: ‘They shouldn’t be on TV!’  It makes us think about how far the industry has come … and the work still to do. But here, right now, it’s been fun.

McNEEL: Monteze was referencing the women who really created the regional theater movement … and I’m reading the book on Zelda Fichandler and her writings [The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater], which is brilliant, and thinking about Marjorie Walker who founded City Theatre, but also thinking about City Theatre right now, and that it’s not unusual to have women in leadership roles who are running all our different departments here. So I don’t think it feels unusual at all to have an all-female-identifying cast up on the stage

DROBOT: And backstage and crew, too.

FREELAND: And I think it’s a safe space. I would venture to say, from feedback, that we offer a space where people can be themselves and can push that boundary and find vulnerability in who they are. 

onSTAGE: We are all being bombarded with political commercials and news right now, so has that been a point of discussion as you prepare this production?

DROBOT: I think that certainly does pervade the atmosphere. You can’t escape politics. … I think there’s certainly that axiom of, ‘If I weren’t laughing, I’d be crying.’ Here we have this room filled with laughter and fun and this kind of over-the-top spirit, so that when we had two sold-out previews this weekend, you could just feel the energy and the need for release. I think that it’s a natural response to the tension in our current political cycle. 

McNEEL: It’s not written for this exact moment – no one could have predicted this moment that we’re in politically. … Yet there are lines in the show that are certainly of the moment. It would be really funny if it were five years ago or five years from now, but it resonates with this moment. And that’s what City Theatre tries to do with every show we produce.

onSTAGE: Although it’s a Tony-nominated play, I don’t think this is one that too many people are going to be familiar with. What would you want them to know?

McNEEL: I really want to underline that [the play] is not political. It’s a workplace comedy. … If it’s political, people are going to bring their politics to it.

onSTAGE: It brings to mind a 9 to 5 plot, of women trying to raise up someone who maybe doesn’t deserve it.

DROBOT: I think that’s part of the legacy that the play carries on, that it’s all of these women who are doing everything they can to maintain the image of the POTUS, and things go quickly awry. 

MORE ON CITY’S 50th SEASON

onSTAGE: Through City Connects, you always partner with outside organizations that are relevant to the production. Who are your partners this time?

DROBOT: We worked with Arcade Comedy on improv; Missy was a special guest for Irony City. We’ll have the League of Women Voters here registering folks to vote. Alicia Carberry [policy director for City Councilman Bob Charland], we wanted to create a partnership where we could have a female political staffer talking about her experience, so she’ll be our talkback guest at the first Sunday. … Melva Graham, who’s our artistic assistant and community coordinator, has done a great job arranging and detailing all of these partnerships. 

onSTAGE: And on Monday, you start City Rewinds, with that great original cast, including Lisa Velten Smith …

McNEEL: I’ve been saying to everybody here that watching the first two performances of POTUS, I am having some real Hand to God vibes. I don’t want to oversell, but I mean it in the sense that there are certain shows you go, ‘I love it,’ but I really love how the audience responds. POTUS has given me those vibes. … About City Rewinds, that was Monteze’s brainchild. 

FREELAND: City Rewinds was a thought of, How do we look back at the 50 years and think about plays that were extremely important to City Theatre’s history and to the community? We wanted to pick five, and so we polled our audience. Of course, Hand to God rose to the top. Clare is going to direct it – her directorial debut at City Theatre. The idea is looking back to say thank you to the writers and the people who helped produce these plays. Some were before our time, but I think there’s a real nostalgia aspect that we can sort of hold onto, even though we weren’t here to create it.

Other readings in City Rewinds are: Having Our Say by Emily Mann (November 18, 2024); Kuntu Rep: A Dramatic Collage (January 27, 2025), Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard (February 24, 2025) and Opus by Michael Hollinger (April 7, 2025),

FREELAND: Opus was a production that allowed City Theatre to really get its name into the national sphere. And while we were looking at a fifth play, I had the thought of, well, Dr. Lillie was so integral to City Theatre, we should celebrate Kuntu, which would’ve celebrated their 50th anniversary as well this year. So we’re doing a dramatic collage of different shows from Kuntu’s history … We have the blessing from Dr. Lillie’s family, and they’ll be here to celebrate the evening.

DROBOT: And I want to add, Ghosted is a great example of looking towards the next 50 years. It’s really an enhancement. You see a shift in audiences who maybe don’t want to sit in the same location with their cell phone turned off in a dark theater initially. So this is an introduction, and I would say a theater adjacent, storytelling event.

onSTAGE: City Theatre has been getting into the theatrical holiday business the past couple of years, including Christmas. Is that to be open at a time when maybe you weren’t before, and invite people to see you in a new way?

DROBOT:  It’s looking at, how do you build an audience and introduce them so that theater doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, it’s something I can’t experience. This is distant for me.’ And I think holidays are, especially post-Covid, we want to come together. … So whether it’s Ghosted, or you may want to come and see the Pemberley series and these Jane Austen characters, reimagined through a smartly written modern lens, it feels like they’re familiar bases to touch, but that can be discovered in a new way.

DROBOT: The one thing I’ll add is, this season really feels like we have these kind of pillars of the American theater on our stage. Lauren Gunderson, one of the top-produced writers in the country, and City’s never done a Noah Haidlle play, which kind of blows my mind. So we’re  doing Birthday Candles, which is very on brand for your 50th anniversary season, as well as just being a gorgeous play. And then we’ve also never produced a Rajiv Joseph [King James] play – these things that are like, oh, this feels so City Theatre. But then behind the scenes we’re in development on four new works that we aren’t necessarily front and center, but that new play engine is churning.

Those include the joint commission of Gunderson’s Little Women, we’re with four different companies and, through the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights, works by a.k. payne and Chisa Hutchinson; and a co-production of L.M. Feldman’s Another Kind of Silence.

PITTSBURGH THEATER NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

onStage: I know you are aware of what’s happening at Pittsburgh CLO and other producing companies, scaling back or worse, still figuring out what the performing arts future looks like in 2024 and beyond. As a theater community, do you talk about the future? 

McNEEL: To bring it back to what we do naturally at City Theatre, it is partnership. We’ve done it for a really long time, but we now do it on steroids now because we absolutely have to. 

He mentions working closely with Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama for The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, and co-producing The Real James Bond Was Dominican with DNAWORKS, King James with Cleveland Playhouse, and last year’s co-productions Fat Ham and Somewhere Over the Border.

McNEEL: This is becoming not just something unique to do, but essential to do, and I will say this about the CLO and the Public and us – the sort of largest producing companies here in town – we talk all the time. We are all facing similar headwinds, and we’re all trying to find our way through it. And, I’ve said it before, if there are silver linings to the pandemic, and there are very few, it’s that we all talk in a way we never did prior to 2020. And I think we’re much more willing to share our warts a little bit with each other and say, ‘We’re struggling with this. How are you doing it?’ Or, there are new ways that we can tackle this, not just as individual organizations, but as a true Pittsburgh theater sector. And so I think we’re all kind of working through these things.

He mentions that, nationwide, the average producing theater company is facing a structural deficit of 12-15%, and Virginia Rep announcing that it must raise $600,000 in two weeks, or shut down. 

McNEEL: It is going to take us years to sort through this mess and figure out what we are on the other side. And it’s going to take patience. It’s going to take serious investment from individual donors, from the funding community, and it’s going to take serious investment and obligation from us to really reimagine the business model. We’ve gotten smaller, we’re doing less work. There are less equity contracts in Pittsburgh than there were pre-2020. That’s just a reality. None of us are happy about it. And so there are seismic shifts happening in the field and you either get on that turntable and figure out where you’re going to get off at a different place or you’re not going to exist.

AND FINALLY …

onSTAGE: In these rough times, it isn’t always easy supporting new work. How does that affect what you do?

FREELAND: We’re excited that when people walk through those doors, they’re going to see something here that they haven’t seen before, and they may not see again. If we want people to support theater, we have to have them understand it is incredibly important to support new work. If ever there’s a whiff that new work is not important, then it’ll stop, and people will only drift toward what has worked in the past. So I think, take the risk, see something new, see something that may push you past your comfort zone, because it will only inspire more new work to come. And that’s the City Theatre legacy.

TICKETS AND DETAILS

POTUS or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive runs through October 13, 2024, on the Mainstage at City Theatre, 1300 Bingham Street, South Side. Tickets, cast bios, post-show talkbacks and more: https://citytheatre.culturaldistrict.org/production/94446/potus-or-behind-every-great-dumbass-are-seven-women-trying-to-keep-him-alive

Categories: Arts and Ideas, Company, Our Posts, Show Previews, Venue

Tags: City Rewinds, City Theatre, Clare Drobot, Ghosted, Hand to God, James McNeel, Lara Hayhurst, Missy Moreno, Monteze Freeland, POTUS, Selina Fillinger, Tamara Tunie, Tami Dixon, Theo Allyn