Skip to main content

Posts

Primary Trust Opens the Heart Strings with Feel Good Vibes

  Malic Maat as Bert, Bria Walker-Rhoze and Monteze Freeland as Kenneth in Primary Trust Photo Credit all to  Maranie R. Staab Since he first set foot on a Pittsburgh stage what, a decade or so ago, Monteze Freeland has wowed audiences as an actor, director and theater administrator. And while I’ve been able to catch two of the productions in which he showed off his Thespian skills, I have to admit his latest role as Kenneth in Primary Trust is the one that impressed me most. In creating his character of a 38-year-old African-America male living in Cranberry, New York, just east of Rochester, Freeland as Kenneth seems quite comfortably settled in a routine and repetitive life following a childhood trauma as a 10-year-old. Early in the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Eboni Booth, he recalls the anguished terror he felt each day worrying that his mother wouldn’t return from her day job. His emotional life shattered when he returned home one day only to find his mother dead....
Recent posts

Coming Up in MainStage Live Juilliard String Quartet

  MainStage Live JUILLIARD quartet   Monday, March 30, 2026, 7:30 PM Carnegie Music Hall,  4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213   Our 2025–26 MainStage Live season concludes with a return of the remarkable Juilliard String Quartet, which opened our inaugural season 65 years ago. Originally founded in 1946 and described by The Boston Globe as “the most important American quartet in history,” the ensemble engages deeply with the classics while embracing the mission of championing new works. In a program spanning three centuries, including a new work written for the group in 2024, the Quartet will perform music of J.S. Bach, Dimitri Shostakovich’s haunting String Quartet No. 7, and the Mizrahi-American composer Michelle Barzel Ross’s “Birds on the Moon.”  Concluding our celebration of American chamber music will be Antonin Dvořák’s beloved “American” Quintet, written during the composer’s stay in Spillville, IA. DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH  String Quartet No. 7 in F...

Opening April 4th: world premiere Paradox of Education

  Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company Our City. Our Voices. Opening April 4th! Paradox of Education By Ty Greenwood Directed by Maurice Redwood April 4th – April 20th 2026 Carter Woodson Redwood Theater Madison Arts and Entertainment Center World Premiere Ty Greenwood’s Paradox of Education is a bold and unflinching look at the cost of ambition and the pursuit of belonging within America’s higher education system. First developed through ASOLO Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Playwright Commission, this gripping play unfolds at a prestigious PWI, where a group of Black scholars fight to hold space in a world that was never built for them. What begins as shared laughter and solidarity soon unravels into a relentless exploration of identity, expectation, and survival within an institution that celebrates diversity but resists change. As friendships are tested and dreams collide with reality, Paradox of Education asks the urgent question, “Where do I belong?” Subscriptions and indi...