Virginia Wall Gruenert, Ericka Cuenca and Ingrid Sonnichsen Reunite for company’s finale at Carnegie Stage
By SHARON EBERSON
Seated in a cozy corner of the Carnegie Stage lobby, three women who continually raise the bar for women in local theater shared memories of sisterhood and collaborations past and present. It was a bittersweet scene, steeped in the knowledge that one of the women would soon be saying goodbye to Pittsburgh.
Actor/producer Virginia Wall Gruenert, with her husband, Hans Gruenert, founded female-centric off the WALL Productions in 2007, and moved their company from Washington, PA, to the black box theater on Main Street in 2012. They gave up ownership of the building five years ago, but continue to lease it, with the venue becoming a hub for local theater groups and individual artists.
Now residents of Iceland, the Gruenerts have left operations of the theater to associate artistic director and performer Erika Cuenca, and they have continued to produce shows from Carnegie to New York City and now, with their lease up, the Gruenerts’ plan is to stick to European productions, and the future of Carnegie Stage remains in flux.
When Virginia says the venue is the couple’s legacy in Pittsburgh, it is a poignant reminder of what could be lost if this versatile and accessible venue, just 6 miles from Downtown, were to close.
As a farewell performance, with longtime collaborators Ingrid Sonnichsen and Cuenca, Virginia Gruenert chose the two-hander Breadcrumbs — she will be onstage with Cuenca, directed by Sonnichsen — opening April 10, 2026, at Carnegie Stage.
and Virginia Wall Gruenert, at Carnegie Stage. off the WALL productions founders Virginia and Hans Gruenert are pulling up stakes after the Carnegie performances,
and staying close to their new home in Iceland. (Image: Sharon Eberson)
The play by Jennifer Haley doesn’t follow linear rules as it explores the relationship between Alida, a reclusive fiction writer who has been diagnosed with dementia, and her caregiver, Beth, a troubled young woman who offers to help Alida complete her autobiography. “Together, they delve into the dark woods of Alida’s past, unearthing a tragedy that shatters their notions of language, loneliness, and essential self.”
Grunert read the play a decade ago and admired it, but set it aside. In looking for a work that specifically would reunite her and Cuenca onstage, she rediscovered Breadcrumbs, and fell in love with it all over again.
“I love it not only for the story that it tells about the relationship between two women, and these two women individually, but I knew there was a lot of potential in this play that I am not smart enough to stage. I’m not a director, never was, but I knew that a really good director could do something fabulous with this. … There’s very little that’s realistic about it, so that’s one of the things that drew me in. That, and the language — she’s a wonderful writer. So I was happy to take this opportunity to put it on stage.”
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, OFF THE WALL
Sonnichsen, a longtime performer from Broadway to most local stages, has been teaching acting at Carnegie Mellon since 1995. For off the Wall, she has directed The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs, Inky, the Pink Unicorn, and Byhalia, Mississippi.
In Breadcrumbs, she has been presented with a vexing puzzle.
“I read the play, and I was like, ‘I have no idea what this is about. I don’t know what to do with this,’” said Sonnichsen. “And then we did four sessions, what would be termed table work. Ginny was up in Iceland and Erika was around, and we did it on Zoom over a month, and that was hugely successful. I mean, just in terms of, ‘What do you think [the playwright] means here?’ “
She also wanted it to be known, “It’s not depressing, and it’s funny.”
Cuenca, a frequent actor in off the WALL productions, among other Pittsburgh venues, had a description that had nods all around.
“I think it’s a story about healing,” she said. “It really taps into traumas and the mother wound, and I think that there’s an arc of healing for both of the characters, even as one’s mind is crumbling.”
Added Gruenert, “The lines that always stand out to me when we’re on stage is, I say, ‘You’re here so you can tell everyone you saved me.’ And she says, ‘No, you saved me.’ And that’s basically the play, what it’s about in a nutshell.”
“Yeah,” chimes in Sonnichsen. “What does love in action look like?”
There’s a whole lot of it in the Carnegie Stage at that moment, as the three women prepared to say goodbye.
AN INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
The Gruenerts have plans to bring Breadcrumbs to Reykjavik (their home is six hours from the country’s largest city) in August, with the production created by a team including Pittsburgh-based scenic designer Stephanie Mayer Haley and Icelandic video-projector designer Owen Hindley.
Sonnichsen described some of the experience of working with the team in the room, via Zoom, and with a translator, including when she received original music from Iris Thorarins, the Icelandic composer, vocalist, violinist and electronic musician, who is also the show’s sound designer.
The director had asked for a piece that sounds like a music box, working through lighting designer Juliet Louste as her interpreter, “And I got music that mirrors it, but it’s not literally a music box, which is fine. And so I mean, things got translated, and now there’s this music that I love, which is wonderful.”
After presenting the play Reykjavik, with another scene partner, in August, Gruenert said, “We’d like to take it to what they call the Nordic Circle. The arts are very much supported in Europe. The Nordic Circle includes Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Reykjavik, and any one of these cities in the circle, you never pay rent on a theater, ever. And Hans has already talked to someone he met in Berlin … so we’re probably going to Berlin, because they love English speaking theater.”
Producing theater away from the mainstream, that leans into women’s works, has not been a smooth ride for the Gruenerts. They have had trouble over the years attracting audiences and funding in Allegheny County, which prompted the move from their venue in Washington, where they started out producing established plays and musicals, as well as Virginia’s original works.
“The main thing I remember,” said Sonnichsen, as the three women discussed their shared history, “is the house that the theater was charming, and Washington was sad as a town. … And I think it was my second or third night, I was teaching a full schedule over at CMU, and I taught a late class, and I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner before rehearsal. And the next night, Ginny and Hans had bought a microwave, so I could cook dinner. And I remember thinking, ‘Ooh, they’re really nice.’ ”
All three women were in the company’s 2009 production of Agnes of God, with Cuenca in the title role. Sonnichsen recalled, “We had a very good time in it. We really did. Maggie Balsley directed it and [we all] were wearing the hideous habits, and it took, I don’t know, some sort of operation to get them on. And I don’t even like hats!”
“The lines that always stand out to me when we’re on stage is, I say, ‘You’re here so you can tell everyone you saved me.’ And she says, ‘No, you saved me.’ And that’s basically the play, what it’s about in a nutshell.”
— Virginia Wall Gruenert on ‘Breadcrumbs‘
They all laughed at the memory in a production, one among many, of a company whose purpose was to support women in theater.
“It was incredibly refreshing and different — I mean, that was the mission from the start,” Cuenca said. “It had sort of opened a little bit to include other marginalized voices, but it was very much female-centric, and we always felt very encouraged to invite other female artists to the table and collaborate.”
She noted that Hans Gruenert, very much involved as a producer, “He’s the one who encouraged that. It was very much him, propping everybody up.”
Now, off the Wall is ready to pull up stakes, and Virginia Gruenert can’t help but feel the bitter with sweet.
Opening night for Breadcrumbs sold out in a matter of days, “which never happened in 19 years,” she said, and other shows were selling well at the 90-seat Carnegie Stage.
I’m glad [audiences] are coming, and they’re welcome. Saturday night is almost sold out, too, this week, and next week is doing well so far, which is new to us,” Virginia Gruenert said, adding, “So it’s great. It’s really great.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Off the WALL’s production of Breadcrumbs is at Carnegie Stage, 25. W. Main Street, Carnegie, PA, April 10-12, 16-18, 2026. Tickets: https://www.ticketor.com/carnegiestage/breadcrumbs
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Feature, Feature Stories, Our Posts, Show Previews
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