By SHARON EBERSON

Karla Boos’ admits her singular vision might at times seem “batshit crazy” to the rest of us.

“I do things that I don’t understand, and don’t know how to do,” she would often say.  

What to her has been marching orders, to the Pittsburgh theater community has been an immeasurable impact of innovation and wonder. 

Boos waves her magic wand, forged of a steely determination, backbone and creativity, and, “Poof,” Quantum Theatre has audiences off on mystical adventures, often accompanied by well-documented exposure to Pittsburgh’s mercurial weather.  

Artistic Director Boos is saying goodbye to the company she founded 35 years ago at the end of 2026. First, she will direct The Tempest, back at one of her favorite venues, the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark, July 17-August 23, 2026, in a production that features longtime collaborators among the cast and creative team. 

A wide-reaching search has been ongoing for Boos’ successor, and her plans are to step away and let new leadership do their own thing, just as she has steadfastly done hers.

What Quantum will look like without Boos is impossible to quantify. To say that she has created a site-specific theater company, with locally produced works that defy categorization, doesn’t quite cut it. 

Boos is saying goodbye to her company, surrounded by friends and doing one of the things she likes to do best: Configuring Shakespeare’s The Tempest on her terms, with Jeffrey Carpenter as Prospero, back where he roared as King Lear for Quantum, and where he directed the groundbreaking Hamlet, adapted by Boos and starring Treasure Treasure.

The cast also includes Tomé Cousin, Jerreme Rodriguez, Carolina Ignacia Vargas Romero, Joshua Brelsford, Julia Silverman, Mark Staley, Joe McGranaghan, Corey Rieger, Dave Mansueto, Sandy York, Adrienne Wehr and Jennifer Tober.

It was Memorial Day when she was sitting in Commonplace Coffee in North Point Breeze for our chat. Looking around the space, one could easily imagine, “This is an indoor-outdoor space where a Quantum production could take shape.” The site, in Rockwell Park, had already been Quantum-fied for the annual fundraiser known as Q Ball, in 2024. 

Boos plans to be active behind the scenes with the company through the second offering of this 2026-2027 season, Radio Island by Liz Birkenheimer and directed by Katie Brooks, which opens in October. The season finale is the premiere of Cassandra, by Morag Shepard and directed by Alex Ungerman, in April of next year. 

It is The Tempest where our conversation begins. 

onSTAGE PITTSBURGH: Was doing The Tempest always the bullseye you had in mind for your finale as Quantum’s leader?

KARLA BOOS: Yeah, 100%. I’m doing my beautiful, I hope, last work. I am shepherding Radio Island with all the care I give everything. They all feel like mine. And then I’m out of there December 31st in a very long planned fashion. And Quantum Theatre, in its wisdom, asked Alex Ungerman, who’s been our director of production and just showed more of his artistic colors during that benefit that we did, to fill the gap before the next artistic director is in place, with the spring show … and that will give the new artistic director a good six-month runway before a season must appear. And meanwhile, the search is underway, has been since January, and there are fantastic candidates. So they are having a very thoughtful process that will I think allow them to bring people in to see The Tempest and meet all of us in the midst of a really seriously Quantum thing this summer. And by the end of the summer, they’ll make a decision. 

oSP: Is this a national or international search, because you play in both those playgrounds? [I was thinking specifically in Karla’s role with programming the Festival of Firsts for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.]

KARLA BOOS:  I think it’s a tough time, under this administration, to consider people who do not have American citizenship. There are people with dual citizenships in the pool, I’ll say. And people having international contacts is one of the stated criteria. So it is certainly national and an interest in maintaining that position that I’ve gotten a lot of richness for myself, in work from out of the country. 

oSP: How involved are you in this search? I mean, you’re handing off your baby …

KARLA BOOS:  Not very involved, except that people do want me to fill in on the artistic front stuff that they wouldn’t necessarily know to be impressed about. So I’m doing that, as asked.

oSP: Quantum has a reputation of reflecting your sensibilities, of know how to maintain the size to keep it financially and creatively viable. Do you think that is part of what will attract a new leader?

I mention the three-show season, and Karla reminds me that in the past, there have been four shows.

KARLA BOOS: Remember that? And they just got bigger, and then, three seemed better. 

oSP: I probably should have started with this question. When the discussions about consolidating professional theaters in Pittsburgh began, one of the questions people were asking was, ‘What is this or that theater?’ How would you describe Quantum Theatre for the past 35 years?

KARLA BOOS: Quantum Theatre has followed my trajectory as an artist, right? My inclinations, my interests. I’ve been interested in doing things that I haven’t done before, that are unknown to me. And that’s led to eclecticism.

oSP: At the Post-Gazette, we once used “quirky” in a headline to describe a Quantum production, and I was called out for stating the obvious.

KARLA BOOS:  I think, I can say firmly, it is me. So we know that it’s going to be completely different, right? Will Quantum continue to support one artist’s vision? Does that make sense in the present? I don’t know. I happily don’t have to know. I don’t know if other theaters make decisions by committee or a few artistic collaborators. I don’t believe that would have been right for me.  It’s much more usual to become an expert in something. I don’t like that. That to me is the kiss of death. If I feel like I’m doing something from a place of expertise, that is a dangerous zone. I do things that I don’t understand, and don’t know how to do. 

oSP: So that brings us back to The Tempest. Why did you choose that as your swan song?

Throughout her Quantum journey, Karla has programmed and and directed, revised and performed in Shakespearean works, from Antony and Cleopatra (1997), The Merchant of Venice (1999), A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (2000), ‘Richard II’ (2004), ‘Cymbeline’ (2008), ‘Twelfth Night (2011), The Winter’s Tale (2015), and, in recent years ‘Lear’ and ‘Hamlet,’ also at Carrie Furnace, the site of ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ as well. Never far from her mind, past productions also include ‘Shakespeare’s Will,’ about the Bard’s wife.

KARLA BOOS:  I love Shakespeare, and I love to explain the paradoxes. I feel, as some people do, that I am very in tune with Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a language I do understand, but The Tempest, I do not. The Tempest is such a mystery to me. Here I am in it. I’ve been in it six months fully, but it’s so full of things to be explored, and yet I can really see why it’s many people’s last work. It’s very potently Shakespeare’s last work. I like [Polish critic and author Jan Kott’s] writing about it most of all. [In Kott’s book, Shakespeare, Our Contemporary], he talks about Shakespeare in the amazing time of change, just to kind of understand that in the beginning of Shakespeare’s life, there was such a rigid belief [that] the Earth was the center of the universe, just like the white man was the king, the center of the moral order. But by the end of Shakespeare’s life, science had erupted. Even though they were burning heretics for saying that the Earth revolved around the sun, the cat was out of the bag, and the entire moral order was in question. So I mean, I draw parallels to our present in that, that we are children who, when we were young, could not have imagined the end of our species or the destruction of our planet, right? And here we fear for the lives of our grandchildren, because it’s so accelerated and true. … I mean, there’s all these mirrors and reflective layers in The Tempest of the cycles of history that are born of the cycles of human nature, the violent cycle of human nature.

oSP: I guess you could say it’s right in the title.

KARLA BOOS:  Right? And yet Kott says the Tempest offers fragile, stubborn hope. He also makes a lot of parallels to King Lear and Hamlet. And I love that it’s our third work [in recent years], and Kott is saying that The Tempest offers the ultimate arguments that Shakespeare began in Lear and Hamlet. It’s fascinating. There are so many levels. I started making Shakespeare with Jeffrey Carpenter in 1997 … 

oSP: Tell me about the cast. 

KARLA BOOS:  It’s a wonderful cast. Jeffrey is Prospero. Tome´ Cousin is Ariel. Jereme Rodriguez is Caliban, the second protagonist. And you may never have hear of Carolina [Vargas Romero] as Miranda. They’re all fantastic. Stephie Meyer Staley is the scenic director, Susan Tsu [costumes], Todd Brown [lighting], and Joe Pino [sound]. My beloved.

oSP: You’re going out with the Quantum family. 

KARLA: Yeah. I mean, I’ve been doing that for a while, with, like Tony Ferreri and [Steve “Shapi” Shapiro] on 10 out of 12. It’s been an extended rollout of work with people I love. I’m happy to sing their praises all day long.

oSP: Was choosing the venue this time around more important than ever? Was it something you’ve been thinking about for a long time?

KARLA BOOS:  I know the site so very well, and there’s an aspect of it that I wanted to explore and seemed right for The Tempest. … That relic of industry now sits really in what feels like an island of nature, and the island bears all this evidence of the past, of greatness, that came and went. We’ve extended that. We’ve given another layer further in the past, not just the Industrial Age, but one that is less understandable, more mysterious, clearly evidence of a power from the past, though, that Prosperous harnesses, or is trying to harness, and is engaged with it. 

oSP: We can’t talk about this site, or Quantum’s past, without bringing up the outdoor productions that were interrupted by nature. Specifically, rain and lightning.

KARLA BOOS:  Like the night Lear didn’t die? [Then director of production] Michelle Engelman said, “We’re calling it. Get them to their cars in the parking lot.” 

oSP: I wasn’t there for lightning. I did get rained on, but I stuck it out until the end. 

KARLA BOOS: The lightning is all very prescriptive. … I think back in the old days, we didn’t know how you could find out how far away the lightning was. But now we can. And when it hits a certain place, the show is called. 

Recalling such distant lightning and storms during “Cymbeline” in Mellon Park and “The Golden Dragon” in Highland Park. 

oSP: I sat in the rain in Highland Park,  and watched the storm come in.

KARLA BOOS: We all did. 

oSP: As you seek someone to replace you, the fact that you don’t have a venue, that your productions have always been site-specific, is that an enticement or a hindrance, or something in between? 

KARLA BOOS:  People say, ‘That’s brilliant.’ And we find that many people are working in that way, have some experience, although probably not as much as ours.

oSP: Are you leaving with works that you haven’t done, that you wanted to?

KARLA BOOS:   Tons and tons of things. Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things, of course. And how I’ll feel about that down the road, I don’t know. 

oSP: How long do you think it’ll be before you get that itch to work again, or do you think you just need time to wonder about that? 

KARLA BOOS:  Right now, I feel really ready for a blank slate and unfettered ability to live and see what happens to me. It’s been a lot of caring. I’ve been privileged to care so much about what I do, but I’m ready to see what it’s like to live without that, and just engage with the world a little bit more. So I don’t know. I feel it’s very possible that I’m done as an artist, and I feel very satisfied even as, of course, there are things that I wanted to do that I haven’t done. But I’m just looking for some other relationship with the world right now. 

oSP: Standard question, but any memory you’d like to share something you … 

KARLA BOOS:  A thousand of them.

oSP: Of course. But is there anything that stands out as you look back? 

KARLA: A million things stand out. The beautiful things with the people are the primary thing. The amazing journey with these amazing people who have made me look so good. The four who are gathered for this show, Stephie, Susan, Todd and Joe Pino, but I could say so many others, right? And the things we’ve done together that were just batshit crazy.

oSP: Tamara at Rodef Shalom Congregation and The End of the Affair amid the wreckage of the former Emma Kaufmann Clinic in Polish Hill, were two of my favorites. But just now, I was thinking of how much red clay dirt you brought to the Strip District (32nd and Smallman) for Red Hills. Tons. I remember writing that before I saw it, and thinking, ‘Oh my God, what?’

KARLA BOOS: I could tell you things like I went into Frick Park in the dead of night [redacted] for Howling Miller. I could tell you things that would curl your hair, Sharon, if you weren’t already curly. 

oSP: Is anything you’d like to add?

KARLA BOOS: I’ve thanked the people that have made me look good, right Because people have been willing to go on the journey into the unknown.That’s the thing. I feel a lot of my job has been to be present enough to hear the brilliant ideas of people, and not let them back off, ever. That’s very often what happens. Somebody has a brilliant idea and then talks themself out of it, and I have not allowed that. I’ve made them explore their brilliant ideas, and that has been Quantum’s greatness. And in this time, it should also be said that that’s a greatness of the institution, and the institution is the board, the people who are willing to own it and say, “We need it. We have to provide what it needs because we believe in it. ” So Quantum has had that from the word go, and I have been the beneficiary of those two things, the greatness of the artists in our midst and those we’ve reached out to and found the best sort of platform they could find here in Pittsburgh, and the people behind it who have supported it. That’s why [Quantum is] strong. It’s courage, two different ways.

Categories: Arts and Ideas