By SHARON EBERSON
Nicholas Perez-Hoop‘s tenure as Artistic Producer of City Theatre had only just begun as he was quizzed about what comes next — the overall theme of the season, and a theme for his own adventures as a theater artist.
A Point Park University alum and native Floridian, Perez-Hoop’s work has been featured at the Straz Center of the Performing Arts in Tampa, Blumenthal Arts of Charlotte, Arizona Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Florida Repertory Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Jobsite Theater, Hippodrome State Theatre, Atlanta Shakespeare Company, American Stage, freefall theatre and more. He most recently served as Associate Director for the original staging of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, a show being staged by Little Lake Theatre on October 8.
Just now, it was Day 2 of his new position at City, and the South Side theater was gearing up for its 2026-2027 season, opening with the solo musical In Clay on September 19. City will be hosting a 2 p.m. Season Launch Party on that day as well.
Perez-Hoop’s first order of business is to ease some of the burden on Clare Drobot, who has been going solo as Artistic Director since Monteze Freeland left for Alumni Theater Company at the end of the 2024-2025 season.
With James McNeel as Managing Director, the last time the leadership model of City worked this way was under A.D. Tracy Brigden, with Reginald Douglas as Artistic Producer, before Brigden’s sudden exit in 2017 (Douglas left in 2020, for Mosaic Theatre in Washington, D.C.)
With hope that the revolving door stops here, Perez-Hoop will work closely with Drobot, McNeel and City’s Production Manager on “season programming, line producing, creative team collaboration, new play development, and ensuring City Theatre’s broad engagement with Pittsburgh’s artistic community,” according to the job as advertised.
“I had a Google alert set on my phone for any positions that fit within what I was sort of looking for, and I’d been interviewing around the country for a while. I had a couple very, very close calls, and I had one opportunity that came my way,” said Perez-Hoop.
And then he interviewed with Drobot, “and I really, really, really loved the energy that she was providing and everything that I was learning about City. Then I started to immerse myself in what was going on in the Pittsburgh community, and learning a lot about where City has been the last 10 years, and where they’re looking to go. And then from there I fell in love, and I was like, ‘Man, I really, really want to get to do this.’ ”
He played it a little coy when the offer came, telling Drobot, “Let me think about it,” although he had made his choice.
“I was told though that you’re not supposed to accept anything right away, on the phone,” he said. “So I gave myself eight hours and then I told her, “Yes.”
Some more of my chat with Nicholas Perez-Hoop.
onSTAGE PITTSBURGH: Are you settled in Pittsburgh yet?
NICHOLAS PEREZ-HOOP: Definitively no. I have an apartment [but] I still don’t have a bathroom trash can. I have one spatula. I have probably one less cooking pan than I should have. It’s tiny stuff like that, where you realize when you don’t have it how inconvenient it is not to have it. I was so nomadic since I guess 2021, so much of my life and career has been doing shows all over the country and taking on fellowships or positions or things like that that would put me in a place for like two or three months. And now I’m at a place where I am so excited to have a home, but now I’m like, ‘Oh, I really need to not live like a college student, essentially.’ So that’s where I am right now.
oSP: Were you based in Florida while you were moving around?
NPH: I’m from Florida originally, and I spent a lot of time working there and going home, visiting my family in Tampa and the Sarasota area, mostly because I had built such a strong relationship with a lot of artists there. So I was finding that there was a lot of work there for me. … You wouldn’t know it from looking at it from far away, but when you’re up close, [Sarasota has such a strong community], with Asolo [Repertory Theatre] there, and Urbanite, and Florida Studio Theatre there and West Coast Black Theater Troupe.
oSP: Coming to Pittsburgh, what did you know about our arts community and about City Theatre?
NPH: I went to undergrad here for one year. … The 18 months that I was in Pittsburgh, I really enjoyed it. I saw a lot of shows at City, and I think my first show was Hand to God, which was phenomenal. It was a landmark production. … I was so surprised at how much they were able to sort of fit into that space for that show. I’d grown to really enjoy Pittsburgh as a city, and I always thought that might be a place that I would end up again. But no part of me would ever have fathomed that I would have ended up at City, 11 years ago when I was here.
oSP: The leadership has been in a state of flux, in a way, for a long time, since Tracy Brigden left and Mark Masterson returned, and then there were three co-artistic directors … You said that you could see where things were going. Does the leadership plan in place seem like it’s settling in now?
NPH: What I think is so brilliant about Clare, is there’s very little ego in anything she does. It’s very much about uplifting the artists, and that is so obvious in the programming that City has done and the amount of opportunities that they’re providing for Pittsburgh locals, which I’ve just found to be so brilliant. … There are so many theaters right now that are really, really sort of struggling, because I think that unfortunately you have to be looking at what’s going to be coming down the pike in three or four or five years. Where are the trends going? Where are the audience trends going? What is programming looking like right now in the big markets like Chicago and New York? Because that programming eventually trickles itself down. Whether we care to admit it or not, what is being produced or presented in those cities eventually finds its way to the other markets. … What are we able to take away from those trends, and say, what is the right fit for Pittsburgh? I’ve just found that Clare is really ahead of that.
oSP: How does that fit into what your goals are and what you hope to do here?
NPH: Clare takes on quite a lot of responsibilities, so the short-term goal is to just alleviate a lot of that stress. I will be an anchoring support system. so that she has the opportunity, not just to step away, but also really hone in on sort of the art-making of it, and not necessarily have to always get so bogged down by a lot of the gritty stuff. But also I just love new work, and I’ve formed a lot of really strong relationships with artists around the country, and I would very much like to just continue to throw some ingredients into the pot and help hopefully present some very interesting new plays at City.
oSP: At the artist gathering that you had recently here, did that help getting to know people here, or was it a little overwhelming?
NPH: It was super overwhelming because I had done as much research as I could to try to understand all of the theaters in town and sort of what the ecosystem looks like right now. … But because there’s this big flux right now, I am meeting people at a very weird and interesting time. And that’s really cool, because I am seeing people in what I think a lot of people perceive to be high crisis mode. and it was interesting to step into this artist happy hour and get to meet people and just hear where they’re coming from and what they’re looking for. It was overwhelming, but I also think it was a really good way to start off with my time here.
oSP: What I’m seeing as a trend in Pittsburgh right now is artists not waiting around, and making spaces for themselves. City has seen that with rentals at the Lillie Theatre, where we are now. City creates opportunities in a lot of ways, such as the Momentum Festival — is that coming back?
NPH: It is definitively happening.
oSP: I know a.k. payne is in residence here, working on new projects while her play that started at Momentum is debuting at the August Wilson House. You talked about local artists but also, bringing in people you’ve worked with elsewhere. Can there be a happy medium?
NPH: Yeah, I think every community is stronger when they learn from other artists that are coming in and providing their own perspective. And I mean artists from any other community. I don’t even just mean like a New York or a Chicago or an LA. I’m talking some of the most brilliant, amazing artists that I’ve ever worked with are based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and places and people that provide their own unique perspective to help uplift the Pittsburgh community and the artists that are here.
We discuss City’s co-productions, including “Fat Ham” with TheatreSquared of Fayetteville, and collaborations with Brian Quijada, who recently won a slew of off-Broadway awards for “Mexodus.” Seeing it at Baltimore Center Stage, Perez-Hoop called it “a ‘Hamilton’-like experience.’ ” He was making plans to see lots more local theater, including BURNBABYBURN!, and had just seen “Assassins,” “which was great.”
oSP: So, I’ve asked you a lot of questions, and I got you on your second day of work.
NPH: You did get me on my second day. It’s been a lot. It’s been great, too. Everyone here is so welcoming, and there’s something really special about when you’re coming into a space where everybody is just so good at what they do, that you have to continue to remind yourself you’re also really good at what you do. They just have been here for a while. … I can’t wait to dive in.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Company, Feature Stories, News, Our Posts
Leave a Reply