10-Minute Play Series Stages its Top Comedies
Future Tenant Features One-Acts by Local Talent
Day of Giving Nets Record Number of Donors, Less Cash
18,200 donors give $6.4 million to nonprofits
Tenth annual Rhythms of Life benefit concert to be held this Thursday
The Rhythms of Life fundraising concert will showcase local musicians to benefit the Sonny Pugar Memorial’s “Music Smiles” program.
Youth Environmental Conference Comes to Pittsburgh
Power Shift 2013 expected to draw 10,000
Miniature Curiosa’s Birds of America
The adventuresome puppet-theater troupe’s new show premiered on Saturday at the New Hazlett. A short review is in Program Notes.
Miniature Curiosa’s Birds of America
Multimedia puppet-and-theater troupe keeps taking risks
Lynn Cullen Live 10/15/13
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; St. Louis Cardinals lost last night; no problems at healthcare.gov; debt ceiling deadline coming up; selfish crazies & cowards make up the Republican party; the Civil War never ended, just went underground; link between achy joints & the weather; pharmaceutical costs in the US; Jason Grilli played air guitar on…
The Pigeoning and It’s Dark Outside at Festival of Firsts
Two complementary live stage shows hit home
Lynn Cullen Live 10/14/13
Video Archive Steelers won’t have a win-less season; our country is falling apart; Columbus Day parade accident in Bloomfield; bicyclists riding w/ reckless abandon; starfish are dying; earth in the middle of a mass extinction; Obit: Michelle Madoff, former city councilwoman; government still shut down, nothing Obama can do about it; misbehaving on 4802; spiders…
UPDATE: WTAE cancels televised mayoral debate
WTAE has cancelled its scheduled end-of-the-month mayoral debate because Republican candidate Josh Wander couldn’t guarantee he would be back in the country. Justin Antoninotti, WTAE news director, says Republican candidate Josh Wander had originally accepted the invitation for the televised debate sponsored by the station and the League of Women Voters. In late September, however,…
PIIN wants city council to request moratorium on school closings
On Monday, Pittsburgh City Council will hear from members of the Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network calling for a moratorium on school closings in the Pittsburgh Public School District. Council will also hear from other city residents unhappy with the district’s decision to close nearly 30 schools in the past eight years. “What PIIN is looking…
Downtown Film Night
Downtown parking lot to host outdoor film screening on Saturday
Lynn Cullen Live 10/11/13
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; Washington Redskins should just change their mascot to a potato; Charles Dickens was a jerk as a father; Off the Record recap; Luke Ravenstahl breaks Twitter silence; OH judge refuses man’s request to reverse claim of being legally dead; oxymoron of UPMC supporting an anti-bullying campaign; catchy ads are the…
HEArt Reading Series Begins
Poets Terrance Hayes, Saeed Jones offer their work
PSO offering free tickets to federal employees
Who said you can’t get culture while furloughed?
Afternoon pick-me-up: new Joy Ike video
New Joy Ike video features sentient socks.
Lynn Cullen Live 10/10/13
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski; Pirates season has finally ended; no better names than those of Dickens’ characters; Jew-dar; more Republican craziness; Affordable Care Act was once Romneycare, made a great difference in Mass.; Tom meets Divine; Callers: George, Moon / Joe / Unknown. Audio Only Archive
Crowd gathers to support victims of Lawrenceville beating
From CP Staff Writer Alex Zimmerman: After Ben Stoviak posted to Facebook that he’d been assaulted last weekend because of his sexual orientation, the LGBT community called for the incident to be treated as a hate crime. And that message reverberated through a protest in Lawrenceville Wednesday night at a peaceful event that drew around…
League of Denial strings together deaths of former Steelers, puts NFL in the hot seat
Pittsburgh stars, for better and worse, in Frontline‘s new documentary on concussions, CTE and the NFL.
Hill District grant to benefit neighborhood small businesses
A recently announced grant from the Citizens Bank Foundation could position small business owners to take advantage of growing development opportunities in the Hill District. The $76,000 donation to the Hill District Community Development Corporation was announced at a press conference at the Thelma Lovette YMCA on Oct. 8. The grant is part of Citizens…
The Harder They Come at the Regent Square
The 1972 reggae classic starring Jimmy Cliff, with its gunplay and peerless soundtrack, has its final screenings here tonight and tomorrow. More in Program Notes.
The Harder They Come at the Regent Square
Reggae classic screens twice more
Freya String Quartet focuses on contemporary compositions
FREYA STRING QUARTET PRESENTS FRESH VOICES. 8 p.m. Fri., Oct. 11, and 2 p.m. Sun., Oct. 13. First United Methodist Church, 5401 Centre Ave., Shadyside. $8-15. freyaquartet.com The members of Freya String Quartet have always seen a lot of things to value in Pittsburgh’s chamber-music community. “We’re all big fans of Pittsburgh — all of…
Hallie Pritts goes Euro with Winter Wedding Party
Alt-country singer-songwriter Hallie Pritts had a few questions as she stepped off a plane in Berlin last December: “I was like, ‘Is this insane? What am I doing?'” She was meeting a friend from college, a French electronic musician and producer named Jules Etienne, to write and record an album. She had nothing but a…
Critics’ Picks: October 9 – 15
[HIP HOP] + THU., OCT. 10 Los Angeles-based rapper and member of the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA) crew Earl Sweatshirt has had a career defined by mystery. After releasing a popular mixtape in 2010, the rapper disappeared. It was later discovered that his mother had sent him to a Samoan boarding…
On the Record with Mr. Fine Wine
TITLE TOWN SOUL AND FUNK PARTY FOURTH ANNIVERSARY with MR. FINE WINE. 9 p.m. Sat., Oct. 12. Brillobox, 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. $6. 412-621-4900 or brillobox.net Mr. Fine Wine (real name: Matt Weingarden) is the host of the long-running Downtown Soulville show on New Jersey’s famous WFMU radio station. He’ll guest at the fourth anniversary…
Most Port Authority pay stations functioning, with some notable exceptions
Allegheny County’s 59 new pay stations at light-rail platforms and bus stops have been performing well, with the exception of some along the East Busway. PublicSource recently tested 54 of the pay stations operated by the Port Authority of Allegheny County and found few problems with the machines along the West Busway and light-rail lines.…
Ed Piskor launches The Hip Hop Family Tree.
ED PISKOR BOOK EVENT AND WILD STYLE SCREENING. 8 p.m. Thu., Oct. 10. Hollywood Theater, 1449 Potomac Ave., Dormont. $10. 412-563-0368 or thehollywooddormont.org Some 40 years ago, hip hop was born of house and street parties in the South Bronx. Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Ed Piskor tells the story in The Hip Hop Family Tree, his new…
Running on Fumes
Want to know how out-of-control Pennsylvania’s natural-gas industry is? Even the most ambitious proposal to curb “fracking,” a measure proposed by state Sen. Jim Ferlo, would allow the number of active wells to increase by nearly 100 percent. Which just goes to show: Even for progressive champions, it’s hard to protect the environment when you’re…
Filling an entire building, Janine Antoni’s works contemplate body parts as sculpture
JANINE ANTONI: WITHIN continues through March 30. Mattress Factory, 1414 Monterey St., North Side. 412-231-3169 or mattress.org It’s been more than 20 years since Janine Antoni arrived with a splash, combining performance and sculpture in works to which the artist’s body was central — chewing up chocolate and lard in “Gnaw” or using her hair…
Savage Love
I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, last week — for my geographically illiterate fellow Americans, Halifax is the biggest city on Canada’s Atlantic coast — to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Coast, Halifax’s kick-ass alternative weekly newspaper. I took questions in the auditorium of a brand-new Halifax high school that has…
The Public’s Our Town
OUR TOWN continues through Oct. 27. Pittsburgh Public Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. 412-316-1600 or ppt.org There’s a danger in presenting a theater classic — the temptation to play it as an Important Work or, worse still, the need for directors to use the script as a mere jumping-off point for somewhat questionable interpretations. Thorton…
Little Lake Theater’s Accomplice
ACCOMPLICE continues through Sat., Oct. 12. Little Lake Theatre, 500 Lakeside Drive, Canonsburg. $12-20. 724-745-6300 or littlelake.org. A twist makes a martini better. And a twist makes a play better. Accomplice, by Rupert Holmes, is the current offering at Little Lake Theatre, and it’s crammed full of twists. Too many, perhaps. There are so many…
Short List: October 9 – 17
SPOTLIGHT: Sat., Oct. 12 — Stage City Theatre artistic director Tracy Brigden and playwright Christopher Durang go back to Brigden’s days with the Manhattan Theatre Club. When she came to City, one of her first initiatives was to feed Durang the commission for a Christmas Carol spoof that became Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge.…
The Crucible at Carnegie Mellon Drama
THE CRUCIBLE continues through Sun., Oct. 13. Philip Chosky Theater, Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland. 412-268-2407 or drama.cmu.edu Just what spirits are aligned so that the federal “shutdown” should occur just as Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama opens a play about theocratic officials abusing their power? Gee, Arthur Miller’s 1953 witch-hunt classic is ever timeless…
BOhèm Bistro
BOhèm Bistro 530 Northpointe Circle, Seven Fields. 724-741-6015 Hours: Tue.-Thu. 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m. Prices: Appetizers, soups and salads 4-15; tartines, crepes, and flatbreads $13-15.50; entrees $15-19.50 Liquor: Full bar Imagine an ancient fieldstone farmhouse in the French countryside. It was long ago emptied of its original treasures, but savvy designers have enhanced its…
Dance troupe turns Carrie Furnace site into site-specific venue
THE PILLOW PROJECT THE JAZZ FURNACE Noon-5 p.m. and 7 p.m.–midnight Sat., Oct. 12. Carrie Furnace site, Rankin. All-day pass $10-15. pillowproject.org Call it site-specific dance on a gargantuan scale. The Pillow Project takes its improvisational “Postjazz” movement style and video wizardry to a whole new level when it invades the Carrie Blast Furnaces, in…
Spanish Accent
Eight years ago, Aitor Coca moved to Pittsburgh and searched, in vain, for traditional Spanish jamón serrano (cured ham). But what Coca, a native of Bilbao, Spain, did find were other Spaniards also homesick for ham — a social group called “Los de Patanegra,” named after the “best” jamón, made from pata negra pigs. Last…
Reel Q: The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 28th annual Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is now known as Reel Q, but it features the same line-up: 15 narrative and documentary films, three programs of shorts, and opening- and closing-night parties. The festival begins Fri., Oct. 11, and runs through Sat., Oct. 19. Opening-night is a double-header with a party…
Two new breweries open, blocks apart, on Butler Street
Matt Gouwens, owner of Upper Lawrenceville’s just-opened Hop Farm Brewing Company, decided to become a brewer in 2005 while he was living in Germany. “I noticed every town had its own little brewery,” he recalls. “I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” In 2009, he enrolled in a year-long training course with the American…
Captain Phillips
Captain Phillips recounts the real-life events of 2009, when the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama was hijacked by Somali pirates off the coast of Africa. On board are the titular captain (played by Tom Hanks), two dozen sailors and no defenses: The crew is largely helpless when only four armed Somali pirates seize control. “No…
Take
I did’t know the sound of my walking, the pale white sight of me could give a gun or a knife a reason to exist and yet I couldn’t look up at him. All I knew was the identity of leather. White high tops, his laces like black streaks, a line I wouldn’t cross to…
Viola
In writer-director Matias Piniero’s loosely plotted tale, a group of Buenos Aires actresses performs Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (on stage, in rehearsal, and in one instance, simply reciting a section over and over) while also ruminating on relationships and their craft. Another woman works delivering packages (they seem to be music or movies copied to discs)…
Lynn Cullen Live 10/09/13
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; BIG GAME tonight, Cards vs. Bucs; Washington Redskins — not much better than saying the N word; Chicago hotels sharing common spaces makes it easy to get lost; after 25 years, Chucky is still the doll that won’t die; why can’t we drink wine in stadium stands?; gov’t approved purchase…
Blue Sky Black Death navigates a rise to popularity as a production team
BLUE SKY BLACK DEATH with SISTER CRAYON, MELODIQ. 7 p.m. Wed., Oct. 16. Club Café, 56 S. 12th St., South Side. $10. 412-431-4950 or clubcafelive.com As their various projects mount in scope and ambition, the days of production team Blue Sky Black Death responding to their own band emails directly are surely waning. At the…
