The Future of 3 Companies Is Center Stage, Saige Smith’s High Notes, For the Love of ‘Jaws,’ Triumphant Public Works & More

COMMENTARY By SHARON EBERSON

When we look back on 2025 from some future date, the most memorable moments may be a particular performance or production, but the most consequential are likely to be what was happening behind the scenes at Pittsburgh Public Theater, City Theatre and Pittsburgh CLO. If “affordability” is the watchword of the year in politics, then “sustainability” is the key to the future in theater, and the arts in general. So, before I get to what happened onstage, a look back must begin with the biggest news of the year.

THE BUSINESS OF SHOW BUSINESS, Part 1

A state of urgency is declared by Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh CLO and City Theatre, as the city’s largest professional producing companies become the white-hot local theater topic of 2025. 

The financial burdens of the post-pandemic world saw the Big Three legacy companies taking steps to ensure sustainability, hiring a firm to explore ways to share  behind-the-scenes resources while maintaining their signature brands. One floated idea, involving theaters of all sizes, is a blowout event focused on putting butts in seats. The Public, PCLO and City already have collaborated on discount ticket packages.

THE BUSINESS OF SHOW BUSINESS, Part 2

Productions by several companies of longstanding were not only top-notch in quality, but they enjoyed sold-out runs and/or extensions. 

Relatively small venues, popular local actors and recognizable titles were big winners in 2025, including barebones productions’ The Shark Is Broken, about the making of Jaws, produced during the 50th anniversary of the first summer blockbuster. Front Porch Theatricals’ Sunday in the Park With George, City Theatre’s Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Pittsburgh CLO’s The Rocky Horror Show (at the Greer Cabaret, with add-ons including drag brunches), enjoyed success onstage and at the box office. 

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS IN 2025

These are a few of my favorite things from the past year in Pittsburgh theater, with quite a few caveats: I didn’t see everything, of course, and I didn’t stray far over the City of Pittsburgh borders. I also don’t review school performances, although I saw several that were worthy of the lofty reputations of Carnegie Mellon and Point Park universities, and I don’t predict the destinies of works in development, although I have high hopes for several that I witnessed at the many reading series that continue to dot the Pittsburgh theater landscape.

1. Saige Smith has been on a roll for quite some time, and this year was no exception. Her range has included Hamlet’s Ophelia for Quantum Theatre, Shanita in Skeleton Crew for barebones productions, and a snooping journalist in the hilarious POTUS for City Theatre. In 2025, Front Porch Theatricals snagged her talents for the summer, as both the luminous Dot and her descendant, Marie, in Sunday in the Park With George, plus delivering the anthem “The Story Goes On” in Baby. In Noises Off, Smith was a party to the deliciously disastrous antics of Noises Off  for Pittsburgh Public Theater, and in Birthday Candles for City, she was “enchanting as several characters along the generational timeline.” She finished 2025 as Belle in Pittsburgh CLO’s 33rd annual A Musical Christmas Carol.
2. Two very different productions, both terrific, brought Quinn Patrick Shannon back to the stage, busy though he is as the Director of the PMT Conservatory. For the Pittsburgh Musical Theater regional premiere of Waitress, Shannon played the goofy romantic Ogie, prone to spontaneous poetry and a reminder of Shannon’s considerable vocal prowess. The top-notch PMT cast was led by Zanny Laird (star of City Theatre’s new Little Women) as Jenna, with Brett Goodnack as Dr. Pomatter, in “a perfectly baked” production. That was in May. In June, Shannon joined two other “Patricks” — Patrick Jordan and Patrick Cannon — on an extended voyage in The Shark Is Broken, about the making of Jaws. Shannon played Richard Dreyfuss to a tee, with Jordan as Robert Shaw and Cannon as Roy Scheider, spending too much time in close quarters while Bruce the shark was in a constant state of disrepair. 
3. The Shark Is Broken was brilliant timing by barebones — 2025 being the 50th anniversary of the first summer blockbuster — and popular local casting all-around. When the show was extended, Michael Patrick Trimm joined the cast. Another feat of popular local casting for barebones in 2025: Jordan, David Whalen, Daina Michelle Griffith and Gayle Pazerski in God of Carnage. 
4. The cast of Kinetic Theatre’s Hangmen, from veterans Simon Bradbury, Sheila McKenna, David Whalen, Darren Elicker and James FitzGerald, to newcomers and recent Point Park University grads Sara Joyce Reynolds and Charlie Kennedy, was as good as it gets. The production created a crescendo of suspense, befitting the award-winning dark comedy.

5. Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Public Works Twelfth Night, with 60 cast members representing nine organizations from throughout the city, was a triumph of outreach and entertainment. The professional cast and ensemble members, from a preschooler to a senior citizen, were seamlessly merged into a crowd-pleaser for all ages.
6. The two-hander plus a scoreboard, King James, was seen in two cities, here at City Theatre and at the Cleveland Play House, both featuring a set by Tony Ferrieri and outstanding performances by Pittsburgh’s Michael Patrick Trimm and Cleveland’s Robert Hunter.
7. Pittsburgh CLO’s co-production of Disney’s Frozen equaled the national tour for onstage talent and spectacle, and perfectly re-created the split-second signature costume switch during Let It Go.
8. It’s not fair to say that Ken Bolden is as reliable as performers come, and leave it at that. His range is reliably far-reaching, from the sympathetic Sorin in The Seagull to the deceptively evil Ken Lay in Enron, both for Quantum Theatre. In 2025, those productions took audiences from the banks of the picturesque pond on the Chatham University campus, to the steely modernism of One Oxford Center, Downtown. Bolden also continued to champion the work of former students, including Max Pavel, helping to bring the spellbinding indie production of Witch to Carnegie Stage.
9. Pittsburgh Playhouse, beyond the conservatories of Point Park University, welcomed the likes of the solo show Robin and Me: My Little Spark Of Madness, and produced ASCEND, an original Cirque du Soleil-esque immersive experience, based on the elements of earth, air, water, and fire, with evocative dance, elaborate costumes, eye-popping projections, acrobatics, and more. (ASCEND, co-created by Kiesha Lalama and her sons, Jacob John White and Jaxon White, is due back at the Playhouse in 2026.)
10. Elizabeth Elias Huffman gave us the world view of Pittsburgh International Theater Company (PICT), with a Miss Julie set in Hong Kong, circa 1948, and the U.S. debut of First Lady, set in a time of revolution in a fictional country. Each production pushed at the boundaries of possibilities on the intimate Carnegie Stage, with scenic designs by Tucker Topel and Sasha Jin Schwartz, respectively.

I can’t go without mentioning … 

• The buzz that goes along with any first-look, large-scale production was provided by Pittsburgh CLO and Madame Clicquot: A Revolutionary Musical, about the women who revolutionized the champagne industry.
• Alexander Podolinski leapt from stages in Westmoreland County to Downtown Pittsburgh, as a devilish Mordred in Camelot, then starring as Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, both for Pittsburgh CLO.
• Matthew Hydzik has come home to Pittsburgh stages after a stellar Broadway career. Besides roles for PCLO, his considerable talents were on display in a Momentum Festival reading of the Joe Gruschecky musical East Carson Street.
• Sam Lander wracked up impressive dramatic credits in 2025, among them with Prime Stage in Twelve Angry Men and Mr. Edgar A Poe Presents, and in Jeremy Seghers’ compelling production of The Trial, at Pitt’s Rauh Studio Theater.
• Darrin J. Friedman’s Becoming Arts Collective has burst into action in a big way, including the Bridges and Stages 10-minute play festival: 24 plays in two evenings, with 44 actors, 13 directors and 16 playwrights.
• City Theatre developed two new rolling premiere plays, the multilingual, multicultural Another Kind of Silence, and Lauren Gunderson’s Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. City and the CMU Center for New Work Development have been collaborating with the playwright, who is CMU’s inaugural distinguished playwright-in-residence.
• The onstage/backstage farce Noises Off was an opportunity to enjoy anew the talents of Pittsburgh comedic royalty, Lara Hayhurst. The multilevel turntable set by Tim Mackabee provided a perfect playground for the show’s wild antics, and Hayhurst descending the steps was physical comedy gold.

COMINGS AND GOINGS, AND NEXT STEPS

• Mark Clayton Southers fulfilled a personal mission for his Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, creating the three-play August Wilson’s American Century Cycle Experience. Fences, featuring Kevin Brown returning as Troy, a decade after he first played the role for PPTC, was the annual offering at the August Wilson House, while at theMadison Arts and Entertainment Center, Two Trains Running was on the Carter Redwood Theater stage and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by Ashley Southers, ran in the brand new Madison cabaret space. Southers and Family continue to find ways to keep their two-stage venue hopping, including solo artists, comedy shows and welcoming 2026 with Playlist LIVE New Year’s Eve!
• Karla Boos, the visionary founder and artistic director of 35-year-old Quantum Theatre, has announced that she will leave the company at the end of 2026.
• Pittsburgh Public remains without an artistic director, having hired board member, director/performer and educator Kyle Haden as an “artistic consultant” after the exit of Marya Sea Kaminski. Pittsburgh CLO, meanwhile, is in the process of hiring a new “Producing Director,” an executive position alongside Mark Fleischer. 
• At City Theatre, what was a quartet is now two: Managing Director James McNeel and Artistic Director Claire Drobot remain after the retirement of Marc Masterson and the move of co-AD Monteze Freeland to head up Alumni Theatre Company.
• Little Lake Theatre, in Washington County, has been expanding not only the breadth of its programming but its community outreach. Artistic Director Patrick Cannon & Co. are partnering with the 2025 USL Championship Pittsburgh Riverhounds for a 2026 production of The Wolves (about a girls soccer team) at Highmark Stadium.
• The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the City of Pittsburgh secured funding for Arts Landing, a new Cultural District park that will including a performance space, and is planned to be ready in time for the NFL Draft in April of 2026.

Arts Landing will include a bandshell, located in the northwest corner, near Fort Duquesne Boulevard and 7th Street. 

Categories: Arts and Ideas, Feature Stories, Our Posts

Tags: 2025 Pittsburgh theater, Arts Landing, barebones productions, City Theatre, Kinetic Theatre, PICT, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Public, Quantum Theatre, Quinn Patrick Shannon, Saige Smith