By SHARON EBERSON
Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center is headed into its 20th year in the middle of nowhere. That’s how it may seem when you’re a Pittsburgher headed to Midland, Beaver County, past the former cooling stacks of a nuclear power plant, and find the center and adjacent charter school on a seven-acre oasis, at the end of a small-town business district.
— Justin Fortunato
Justin Fortunato has been Lincoln Park’s Producing Artistic Director since 2015, when he was 26 years old, leading the multimillion dollar center that draws fans from three states. He was a senior in high school when the sprawling center and school emerged in Midland.
“I’m responsible for all the programming that happens in our theater, the overall map of where we’re going, and a large swath of our fundraising efforts,” he said in a recent interview.
Fortunato goes way back in the Pittsburgh theater community. He was a Gene Kelly Award Best Actor nominee for Baldwin High School. A graduate of Point Park University, with friend and music director Robert Neumeyer, he founded Carnivale Theatrics, the forerunner of Front Porch Theatricals. Many of us who have been to Pittsburgh CLO’s longrunning A Musical Christmas Carol know Justin as Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, a role he has played nearly a dozen times since 2012.
He credits the original Playhouse REP at Point Park University for honing his onstage skills, including a production of Tuesdays With Morrie. When The REP returns to the Pittsburgh Playhouse in February, now Downtown, it will be with that play, with Fortunato directing.
On October 2, Lincoln Park jumps into its eight-show subscription season with Disney’s Frozen. The center’s 750-seat proscenium MainStage theater sits alongside a 175-seat black box, for programming that includes musicals, plays, dance theater, concerts and touring acts.
“All 12 months of the year at Lincoln Park have unique programming for audiences of all ages,” Fortunato said, adding, “I also direct up to three shows a year, while managing the artistic and financial success of the production program.”
The 20th anniversary season is filled with blasts from the past, which is just what Fortunato likes to see, and so, too, do Lincoln Park’s patrons. Early ticket sales bear that out, he said.
Grease, for instance, is a show “I want to put in my top favorite five shows, but I always look at it through — and I think this is true for all theaters — theaters aren’t judged or weighed by the shows they’re choosing. It’s what happens to people because those shows happen. And the excitement I’ve seen from a Wizard of Oz and a Grease, these international intellectual properties, that means so much to so many.”
He used the Wizard of Oz to make a point about planning a season, whether for an anniversary or at any time.
“I think to a lot of people don’t necessarily understand the process of what it is to program a healthy, eclectic season that checks all of the boxes, and those boxes include adult entertainment, family friendly entertainment, nostalgia, shows like the Wizard of Oz that we have known, but, of course, since Wicked and the Wicked movies, the overall effect of that show has changed. We know more now than we did 15-20 years ago.”
Shows such as My Way, the Frank Sinatra musical, are both nostalgic, to be sure, but with a twist.
“I’ve been working with the authors for about 18 months to reenvision the show, add a nine-piece orchestra instead of a three-piece combo band, and have an expanded cast,” Fortunato said.
occupy 7 acres in Midland, Beavery County.
Students at the separate Charter School represent 80 school districts — some from as far as a two-hour bus ride — and share the “gorgeous facilities” and figure into the overall programming.
“We rent our building [to the Charter School] Monday through Friday, 8:45 to 3:20 each day, and then at 3:20, it turns into a professional performing arts center, and there’s a liquor license, and there’s touring acts, and there’s magicians and comedians and concerts,” Fortunato explained.
For the students, they have the opportunity to audition for shows and work alongside Equity and non-Equity adult actors.
Programming isn’t the only puzzle to be solved at the performing arts center, which is situated near a business district that does not include any traditional pre-show dining within walking distance. With most restaurants 3-4 miles away, Lincoln Park brings in food trucks for most performances.
When Fortunato arrived at the center in 2015, he found the shared school and center name to be confusing, “from a branding perspective.”
“I beat my head against the wall for the first couple of years when I was working to get coverage and give our name out there because it’s confusing to understand. It took me a couple of years, but I began to embrace that confusion,” he said.
However, since the COVID pandemic shutdown, “I’ve seen a paradigm shift where people do understand more who we are.”
Bringing back titles “that are woven into the fabric of where we are now,” but with a fresh perspective, is the goal. With the Frozen leading the way, “That ‘For the first time in forever’ [season] banner has been so joyous,” Fortunato said.
As the center approaches its 20th season, more than half under his leadership, Fortunato remains bright-eyed with enthusiasm for what’s ahead.
“These 11 years have flown by,” he said, “but it also feels like I started yesterday.”
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