Talking with the Team Putting It Together: Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, Tom McGough and Kyle Haden

By SHARON EBERSON

When their marriage becomes legal sometime this summer, only then will the new name and details of the Pittsburgh Public Theater and Pittsburgh CLO unification be fully revealed. Until that time, they are in the engagement period of a process that will culminate in the region’s two largest professional theater companies merging into one.

For a peek into the process of creating the singular company, along with how the Public and CLO arrived at this juncture, onStage Pittsburgh spoke with Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, acting Executive Director/Producer of the new entity; Tom McGough, chair of the Interim Board of Directors (or “Gang of 12,” as he calls them); and Kyle Haden, the Interim Artistic Director.

The big “I do’s” are expected to be completed on July 31, with official announcements to follow. That date also will kick off a search for permanent positions, including President/CEO, Executive Producer and Artistic Director.

When two become one, Pittsburgh Public Theater will cease to exist, and Pittsburgh CLO’s board will remain as a subsidiary, with one task: the sale of the Construction Center in Springdale. McGough explained that, “It’s much simpler to transfer that title once, than to transfer it to a new corporation, and then have the new corporation do the sale.”

While CLO is in the process of clearing out and selling set inventory, the new company will be served by the flex office-and-warehouse facility in Bloomfield, currently being rented by the Public, and where Crawford and her team are headquartered.

Pittsburgh CLO also has a few shows to put on this year, including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, currently at the Benedum Center, and the upcoming Mean Girls. CLO’s annual A Musical Christmas Carol at the Byham Theater, along with Who’s Holiday! at the Greer Cabaret, will once again brighten the holiday season.

Although details are few before the official announcements, it is worth noting that theater artists and education are being prioritized, say the architects of the new company. That includes the retention of cherished programs such as the Pittsburgh CLO Academy, the Gene Kelly Awards and the Public’s Shakespeare Monologue & Scene Contest, and the intention to continue to operate in Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s venues. 

Speaking at the opening to the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Trust President and CEO Kendra Ingram Whitlock said she was eagerly awaiting “the next act” announcement. 

“Definitely the future is designed to be Downtown. Absolutely,” said Crawford, and McGough said talks with the Trust are ongoing.

While working out a leadership structure and programming, Crawford’s highest priority for the new company “is putting artists to work, making a living wage.” To accomplish that goal, she envisions residencies that represent the breadth of performers, educators and creative teams.

“I’m calling it the resident artist company, but the idea is, it would be all the artists, like dramaturgs, designers, fight choreographers, musicians … the artists who make musicals and plays. It would be multigenerational, and they would be committed to engage with the company in some capacity over the course of the year, [and] they would be actively creating their own art and sharing it with the public as part of this company.”

Echoing that thought, Haden said, “I think one of the frustrations of the process has been that it hasn’t felt artist-centered. And so one of the things that we really want to do is to make sure that artists are getting a chance to create, and providing vehicles for that to happen.”

THE BLAME GAME, AND HOW WE GOT HERE 

In the lead up to whatever emerges from the combined 130-plus years of PPT and CLO, there has been anger and frustration, sparked by a succession of layoffs and lack of transparency about the fate of the companies. Alarm bells have been sounded in a community known worldwide as a mecca for its theater institutions, from youth training to renowned university programs to companies such as the Public and CLO, that provide a home base for many professionals, a catalyst for newcomers, and a source of cultural vitality for Pittsburgh.

Crawford shared that McGough, in a meeting with pink-slipped members of Pittsburgh Public Theater, addressed the companies’ financial crises with a quote from The Sun Also Rises:

A character is asked how he went bankrupt, and his answer is: “Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly.”

“How do you get to these places?,” Crawford said. “We see it in theaters across the country. It’s the same story. It was probably 10 or 15 years in the making. … No one intentionally did anything. It just accumulated over time.”

McGough put the start of the Public’s downfall at 10 years, with the pandemic shutdown among the factors hastening what had already begun. He had been on the PPT board from 2014 to 2023, before the interim board was appointed — six members each, from Pittsburgh Public and CLO — in March. 

He was not part of the decision to lay off the remaining staff members of Pittsburgh Public Theater in a single day. That information was leaked to the press, rather than announced. There likewise has never been an official announcement that the final show of the Public’s 51 seasons was Primary Trust, which ended its run on April 12, 2026. 

“When I sat down with the PPT employees, I said, ‘If you’re looking for somebody to blame, blame the last 10 years of leadership at the Pittsburgh Public Theater.’ And I include myself in that,” McGough said. “I was on the board for a lot of this. Why did it happen? Because they were unable to fix [financial crises] in the face of mounting challenges. It was one thing after another after another and, I mean, the PPT was under water for the last decade.”

He said the Public was unable to make payroll on the day “pink slips” were distributed. It’s a situation that has hit theaters nationwide, with several high-profile companies forced to cancel shows and whole seasons, and others going the same unifying route as PPT and Pittsburgh CLO.

Nationwide, McGough said, “Nobody that I’m aware of has really handled it well,” then adding, “Some have stuck the landing better than others.”

The “suddenly” part of the Public’s scenario was due to an optimistic outlook that “one more thing might happen, one more grant … one more donor that could come through, one more big show or big event that could provide the money to carry it just a little bit further. And when there wasn’t, there wasn’t. As a result, it was handled very badly.”

In hindsight, McGough said he hoped that he and Haden, in the same position, would have laid the groundwork for a more empathetic and transparent handling of the end of Pittsburgh Public Theater, “ But the board members, in particular with the PPT, found themselves in a place no volunteer board member ever wants to be.”

Hints of backlash within the artistic community was evident in October, when the Public, Pittsburgh CLO and City Theatre, then part of a merger exploration, held a forum for a discussion of the future, inviting theater-makers from throughout the region to the O’Reilly Theater, where the Public has been in residence since it was opened in 1999.

The event morphed into a safe space to air grievances with companies that once were thought to be too big to fail. Haden, who had been a member of the board and was in an artistic consultant position with the Public, found himself on the listening side.

“It was an opportunity for everybody to say the things that they had all always wanted to say, and in some ways that was good for everyone to air it and to hear it,” he said. “It’s just hard when you’re an artist and this is the way you want to make a living, and then two of the biggest employers in the region, one goes away, and the other is in danger of going away. That uncertainty is really scary and really difficult. And I think people should have feelings about that. So I don’t blame anybody for being angry or upset or scared about what’s going on. Certainly, I found out about PPT when I got the first phone call from somebody who had been laid off, and I was just sick. It’s been really difficult for everyone.”

McGough ended the look back by saying, “One of the problems and one of the triumphs of both the CLO and the PPT over the past decade is that neither compromised on the art. …  The problem was that as they supported that kind of art all the way to the end, the economics just were working against them.”

AND NOW, FOR THE NEXT ACT

While Crawford cannot divulge particulars, her vision for the new entity emphasizes a “multigenerational” approach to opportunities on a two-sided coin, of production and education.

“My marching orders were to design a business model with [existing] assets to start, that will be sustainable for the future and meet the needs of Pittsburgh,” Crawford said. “And that model is to hire a lot of artists to do a lot of work, and to think of it as a multigenerational theatrical ecosystem. [For example], the CLO has the Academy, and that’s the starter … and then you go all the way up to the donors and the audiences and the artists who have been with the organization, some of them for 50 or more years.”

“We’re raring to go … we’re operating basically by September.”

— Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford

(Image: Laura Greenawalt)

To build on that concept, she said the goal is to create opportunities, so that, for example, “You can have an education at the Academy, go to college, and know that you’re coming back here, and there will be work for you.”

Crawford was speaking in a conference room with a table and chairs that could easily hold 16 people, and hopefully will be filled once she can begin “The Next Act” in earnest. 

An author, Equity stage manager, arts administrator, and teaching professor of Arts Management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Crawford spent five years as Managing Director of Imagination Stage, a non-profit organization based in Bethesda, Maryland, dedicated to empowering young people through performing arts education and professional theater.

In her capacity as creator of a new business model and charting a course for productions starting in January 2027, Crawford is a part-time employee, with access to limited funds or the ability to act until the consolidation is completed. Working with transition project manager Laura Greenawalt, also a part-time employee, she has been exploring foundation commitments and other funding. Greenawalt was part of the feasibility study led by Keene Consulting, and retained for this phase of the unification process.

Perhaps a best-kept and unintentional secret is https://www.nextactpgh.com/, where Greenawalt has been updating the progress of the unification project. Greenawalt has been working with Crawford from the start, and has recently been joined on the team by Aja Jones, PPT’s Chief of External Affairs, and Monica Bowin, PPT’s director of production (all titles are “interim” at this point). The team listed on The Next Act website also includes Wynne Fedele, Development (CLO, launch the Founders Campaign); Angela Langill, Finance (CLO, begin unifying finance processes and accounts); Jim Scriven, Education (CLO Academy, develop an education programming strategy for fall 2026); and Kate Sphar, Foundations (drive foundation engagement and funder communications).

The transition plan for full-time staffing of all departments is expected to start in September, when the recently announced Prologue Season gets underway.

“Staff will already be hired, and hiring artists will start as soon as possible for Script Teases in September, … and then we have Jacob Ming-Trent coming back to Pittsburgh for the first time as this wonderful artist who was raised here, to do How Shakespeare Saved My Life. So yeah, we’re raring to go … we’re operating basically by September.

PUTTING ARTISTS FRONT AND CENTER

Both Crawford and Haden have full-time jobs with Carnegie Mellon. McGough, retired as executive vice president and chief legal officer of UPMC, had previous merger experience, working with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to acquire The Pittsburgh Press and integrate two previously competitive staffs. He currently is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Law and Medicine at Duquesne University.

McGough cautioned that “interim” will be a key word in the coming months.

“We’re in this interim space where we have an ‘interim board,’ we have a ‘unification team,’ which is really the operational people. That’s Kyle on the artistic side, Brett on the management side, some people from both CLO and PPT as essentially the top of an organization chart. … Come closing, they will flip over and take seats for the new company. So that’s why we’re a little squishy on what the exact titles are right now,” McGough said. 

Other immediate “interim” hires he mentioned would include directors of marketing and of development. 

“We’ll have an interim this, and an interim that, and they will all be employees of the new company after July 31, and then one of their first orders of business will be to search for the president and executive producer, who will come in and start to build out a permanent team.”

Although the new entity will continue to be Downtown, working with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to program works throughout the Cultural District, that will not include a summer season of musicals at the 2,800-seat Benedum Center. Planning may also be hampered by future renovations to the O’Reilly and Byham Theaters, although programming will stretch into smaller venues, including the Peirce Theater at 937 Liberty Ave., among the Trust’s free, low-cost and reduced-price venues for nonprofits and local artists to showcase their art.

Times have been changing from the days when Pittsburgh CLO’s summer season of professionally produced musical theater was among the most coveted spots in the United States for up-and-comers to earn their union cards. Among the challenges in choosing locally produced musicals is securing the rights to works that Broadway producers keep close to the vest. High schools can do teen editions of shows such as Chicago and Hadestown, but they may remain unavailable to professional companies for long periods, while on Broadway and on tour.

“I was definitely coming of age during the age of summer stock,” Crawford explained. “I am an Equity stage manager. I’m not an Equity actor, but to get that card, you had to do X, Y, and Z. Well, Equity’s changed, too. … There is a very different pathway. They’ve taken down what I call the Catch-22 of, you have to have an Equity card to do an Equity show, but you can only audition if you have an Equity card. So all of that has been taken away, so the ecosystem has changed since the creation of that summer stock model. The other thing that has changed with summer stock models is how people spend their summers.”

That doesn’t mean the end to locally produced large-scale, professional musicals, she said, but there will be a shift that recognizes the challenges.

In choosing productions for 2027, “Part of my business model is to work with a team of people,” Crawford said, adding, “I’m inheriting a year and a half of work by [outgoing Pittsburgh CLO Executive Producer] Mark Fleischer, by Kyle, like surveys from audiences, research from consultants.”

The understanding that “change is really hard,” Haden said, should include the knowledge that it is a necessity, if thriving professional theater company is to survive in Downtown Pittsburgh.

To help make that happen, he listed “the important things” in the decision-making process, chief among them, “That we continue to produce excellent work for Pittsburghers by Pittsburghers.”

“Can I see my peers? Can I see Alex Noble doing the work that he does?,” Haden asked, mentioning a fellow Pittsburgh-based theater artist. “Knowing that I’m supporting the artists, supporting my friends in a way where they can stay home, and sleep in their own beds, and work here, rather than having to traipse all around the country, knowing that my son can go see these artists, to me, that’s the important thing, and the thing that is really valuable in what we are doing.”

To keep up with the transition team that is consolidating Pittsburgh Public Theater and Pittsburgh CLO, follow https://www.nextactpgh.com/.

Categories: Arts and Ideas, Arts Education, Arts Funding, Company, Feature Stories, News

Tags: 2026, Benedum Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, Kyle Haden, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Cultural District, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Tom McGough