When truth is stranger than fiction, in a playwright’s hands, it can go a few steps further into bizarro world, or find a pathway to grounded reality. Such is the case of the third annual Living News Festival, a Throughline Theatre Company creation that distributes local news stories to six Pittsburgh playwrights, who each write a 10-minute play, ripe for production. The results are currently being presented at Carnegie Stage through Sunday, June 14, 2026.
BANDALOOP, featured performers at the 2026 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, are hard to pin down — literally. Earlier this week, the troupe known for its “perspective-bending dance” could be seen high above Arts Landing — as seen in the video above — perparing for their Arts Festival schedule: 5-5:30 p.m. and 7-7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 12; 1-1:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 13; and 7-7:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 14.
GREAT NEWS OUT OF CARNEGIE!
Claire DeMarco has put her money where her theater dreams are, and partnered with theater artist and administrator Erika Cuenca to save Carnegie Stage, that vital black box at 25 W. Main Street in Carnegie.
“My hope,” DeMarco said, “is that it will remain a theater forever.”
With 2026 Dollar Bank Three RIvers Arts Festival opening in its new Arts Landing home, the next phase of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Downtown renovations turn to Katz Plaza and the Byham and O’Reilly Theaters.
A CONVERSATION WITH “RAGTIME” COMPOSER AND DORMONT NATIVE STEPHEN FLAHERTY
Coming home to accept the Richard Rodgers Award is “a big, beautiful arc,” Stephen Flaherty was saying just the other day. Catching up with Flaherty was no easy task – he and his songwriting partner, lyricist Lynn Ahrens, have been on a seemingly endless red-carpet ride with the acclaimed revival of “Ragtime” ahead of the 2026 Tony Awards on June 7. Flaherty will then head home to the Pittsburgh CLO Gala on June 12, when he will become receive the award that has been bestowed on an impressive list of luminaries, starting with Mary Martin in 1988.
I have seen the fallout from mismanaging expectations and a lack of transparency when jobs are lost, and the rift it can create between people practicing their calling and those entrusted with their livelihoods. The team transitioning Pittsburgh Public Theater and Pittsburgh CLO into a single entity, as well as those performing a “strategic review” of Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse, chose to fire a whole bunch of people (three at the Playhouse) within a few days of each other, without providing any public-facing explanation.
Did they think no one would notice?
Here’s my plea: Le’s do better.
The 35th annual Gene Kelly Awards honoring excellence in high school musical theater in Allegheny County crowned the 2026 winners on Saturday night. Representing four budget categories, the Outstanding Musical winners, announced by Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, were Our Lady of the Sacred Heart High School’s Hadestown: Teen Edition (Budget Level 1), Central & Oakland Catholic High Schools’s The Addams Family (Level II), Elizabeth Forward High School’s The Prince of Egypt (Level III), and Pine-Richland High School’s Chicago: Teen Edition (Level IV).
onSTAGE PITTSBURGH CALL BOARD, May 21, 2026
With news about the O’Reilly Theater, New Horizon Theater, the Henry Mancini Awards, and Journalism Awards Season
A Dark Day for Pittsburgh Professional Theater: All Staff Members of Pittsburgh Public Theater Receive Same-Day Layoff Notices
All staff members of Pittsburgh Public Theater were laid off effective immediately, as of Tuesday, May 19, 2026, a sad day for local theater that was first reported by WTAE-TV and verified by an onStage Pittsburgh source.
Pittsburgh Public Theater and Pittsburgh CLO have announced a “Prologue Season” of curated programming for the remainder of 2026, as they prepare to merge into one organization in January of 2027.
In a press release on Friday, May, 8, 2026, it was also announced that the O’Reilly Theater, home of Pittsburgh Public Theater since 1999, will undergo “significant renovations this fall.”
The lineup also includes the return of the Pittsburgh CLO holiday standard, “A Musical Christmas Carol,” at the Byham Theater, and “Who’s Holiday!” at the Greer Cabaret Theater.
