City Theatre is a professional

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...

company located in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

's South Side. It specializes in productions of new plays and has commissioned new works by playwrights on the national theatre scene, including

Christopher Durang Christopher Ferdinand Durang (born January 2, 1949) is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in the late 1990s. ...

Adam Rapp Adam Rapp (born June 15, 1968) is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play ''Red Light Winter'' was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006. Early life Rapp was born in Chicago to Mary Lee (née Baird; die ...

, and

Jeffrey Hatcher Jeffrey Hatcher is an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play ''Compleat Female Stage Beauty'', which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just ''Stage Beauty'' (2004). He also co-wrote the stage adaptation of ' ...

. Established in 1975 as the City Players under the direction of Marjorie Walker, it was originally composed mainly of

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name *Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyte ...

graduates and was part of Pittsburgh's Department of Parks and Recreation, performing at schools, parks, and housing projects. Initially the group shared their performance space in the North Side's Allegheny Center with

Pittsburgh Public Theater Pittsburgh Public Theater, or The Public for short, is a professional theater company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After the retirement of longtime Producing Artistic Director Ted Pappas, The Public began the 2018–2019 season with a new ...

. In 1979, the group was offered a residency at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

and renamed itself City Theatre. “Homeless” for a brief period of time, the University of Pittsburgh theatre department offered to shelter the theater company in 1980. Attilo Favorini, head of the department, thought that, “The City Theater offered us

itt ITT may refer to: Communication * Infantry-Tank Telephone, a device allowing infantrymen to speak to the occupants of armoured vehicles. Mathematics *Intuitionistic type theory, other name of Martin-Löf Type Theory *Intensional type theory B ...

the opportunity for Pitt’s students to work a professional company.”(Steele, Bruce “Artistic Struggles -The City Theater Company: A History of Bad Luck and Good Theater” pg. 27) In addition to receiving a new troupe of professional actors, arts funding through CETA enabled the expansion of the company and the creation of the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1980. In 1981, under the artistic direction of Marc Masterson, the company moved to a new performance space on Bouquet Street in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

. The company again moved to a new performance space at the former Bingham United Methodist Church in the South Side in 1991, where in addition to its own season it acted as a host space for the earliest productions of the

Pittsburgh New Works Festival Pittsburgh New Works Festival is an annual festival where participating Pittsburgh-area theatre companies each produce an original one-act play. Established in 1990 by Donna Rae, the Festival features four weeks of productions of new plays as well ...

. Marc Masterson became artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, and Tracy Brigden became artistic director in 2001. In addition to its mainstage season, City Theatre offers educational outreach programs such as the Young Playwrights Festival, in which selected submitted plays by students in middle school and high school are given professional productions, and City Theatre Playmakers, which provides opportunities for Pittsburgh youth to write radio dramas that are fully produced and broadcast.

References

City Theatre Company Record

City Theatre Company Records, 1973-1993, CTC.1991.01, Curtis Theatre Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh) {{Pittsburgh Theatres in Pittsburgh Theatre companies in Pittsburgh Religious buildings and structures completed in 1859 Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks

See also

References