Play Premiere Marks Homecomings for Director Katie Brook and Star Siovhan Christensen
By SHARON EBERSON
This interview took place before it was announced that the role of Paula would be played by Helena Ruoti. She replaces Anne J. McEvoy, who was injured in an at-home accident and could not continue.
Among the certainties in life are death and taxes, and that no two Quantum Theatre productions are alike, or like any other theatrical experience.
The site-specific, immersive company has landed in what was a barren space at Rockwell Park, where the premiere of radio island will take place, starting October 23. The script suggests of the ideal space, “Maybe it’s enclosed like the hull of a ship, windowless, a steel trap, a cement barrack.”
of Chelsea Warren’s set for radio island, a Quantum Theatre premiere
at Rockwell Park. (Image: Sharon Eberson/onStage Pittsburgh )
Within the chosen site, the set, still under construction on this day, includes a perch overlooking a rotating central structure, beside movable pillars, and angled seating that assures no two sightlines are alike.
The play marks welcome returns and new beginnings, including star Siovhan Christensen (Chickens in the Yard, The River) and director Katie Brook (The Cherry Orchard), Quantum’s soon-to-be Artistic Director.
It’s before rehearsal when we meet, and light pours in from windows that will be mostly covered when the premiere of Liza Birkenmeier’s radio island gets underway.
Brook leads the way to a table that holds a diorama of Chelsea Warren’s set design, where we are joined later by Christensen, the play’s protagonist in a cast of six. The play marks a homecoming for Christensen, a Pittsburgh native who is now based in New York. In radio island, she plays hostage negotiator Ellen, who is in the midst of a situation while also returning home to rural Missouri and her mother Paula (Helena Ruoti), who has had a mysterious accident.
The apt tagline is: Where global crisis collides with family drama.
“All of the play takes place in Paula’s home, but we fractured it up,” says Brook, using the diorama to explain. “This center thing is the kitchen, which, as in most homes, is the place where everyone hangs out.”
Other sections will be moved to form rooms on demand.
That perch above it all belongs to Treasure Treasure (Hamlet for Quantum), the actor playing a 911 operator.
“But the way it functions in the play, Treasure is mostly like an omnipotent narrator,” Brook explained. ”The homecoming, the operator, that is part of the Missouri world. And then Ellen’s hostage negotiations are over the phone with people in other places in the world.”
The stories may seem unrelated, “but they’re totally interwoven,” Brook said.
“Someone who’s a hostage negotiator , or whatever kind of negotiator in a crime, you have to be the person who thinks, ‘I have to take control of the situation.’ But when your life’s out of control, how does that person deal with it? That’s a big question in the play,” she said.
Karla Boos, Quantum’s founder and retiring Artistic Director, thought of Christensen for the park of Ellen, and introduced her to Brook and playwright Birkenmeier.
“I really appreciate, as a Black actress and as an artist, believing that I could play a lot of different things,” Christensen said. “Casting directors would probably put me in a box, right? But I love that this puts me in a space that I haven’t been in before.”
Brook and Birkenmeier have a long history of collaboration, dating to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University.
“I was using found text, from old recordings, and I needed it to be assembled into a script. That is not my forte, and I pulled her into the project, and that was the first time we worked together,” Brook recalled.
Birkenmeier’s other works have included the book for Jill Sobule’s F*ck 7th Grade at City Theatre, which ran into the COVID shutdown and had an outdoor concert version before Sobule’s tragic death in a house fire.
Early in their careers, the writer and Brook moved to New York at the same time, and continued to work together — their next planned collaboration is “a project about conspiracy theories that’s kind of a courtroom drama.”
Now, Brook is renewing her acquaintance with Pittsburgh as she prepares to take over for Boos, who has led the company she founded for all of its 30+ years.
Boos set up the meeting with Christensen in New York a year ago, and, “It was just obviously a good match, so here we are,” Brook said.
For Christensen, coming home to Pittsburgh means juggling her corporate day-job schedule and that of her teenage daughter’s.
“I made a lot of friends in the theater world here, and a lot of connections in the professional world, Quantum being one of them. So I love working here. and I love the community here. So whenever there’s an opportunity that aligns with all of the busy, wild stuff I’m doing, not even in the industry, just in life … if it fits and I can make it work, then I love to do it.”
“Siovhan and I have actually similar situations in some ways,” Brook said. “It’s really hard to be a parent and in the theater.”
“We have to be like a master of logistics and everything else,” Christensen added. “I want to grow my career and to show her that if I could do it, that she could also do it. So I need to take those steps, and this was a safe step,” because she has family here.
For Brook, this is a time to concentrate on a new work while also connecting with her new work family.
“I’m trying to keep these things a little bit separate so that I can focus on this show,” said the director, who returns New York next month, before moving to Pittsburgh in January. “I’m actually really lucky to be around all the people that I’ll be working with that I can, formally and informally, get certain things going.”
The names and sites may change, but one thing hasn’t changed about a Quantum production, Christensen said.
“I get to really try something new, and we have a really great cast where things are going to change and flow. It’s like painting, and I like that about Quantum,” she said. “It’s like a blank canvas, and I have the opportunity to paint.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Quantum Theatre’s premiere production of radio island is 8 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, October 23-November 15, 2026, is indoors at Rockwell Park, 7514 Thomas Blvd., North Point Breeze. The preshow Q Behind the Curtain, on Saturday, October 24, offers a glimpse into why this space was chosen. Tickets: https://www.quantumtheatre.com/radio-island/
Categories: Feature Stories, Our Posts, Show Previews
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