Archive

MAINSTAGE PRODUCTIONS

Spring 2002

Wild Signs by David Turkel - World Premiere
May 1-19 Wednesday-Sunday 8PM
The Post Gazette's pick for 2002's "most artistically ambitious" and "adventuresome" debut, the company utilized 14 actors, 2 live musicians, fire-eaters, belly dancers, snake charmers, and a modern dancer to tell this epic tale of Augustin Calmet, a French monk in the early eighteenth century who inadvertently introduced Western Europe to the legend of the vampire. The company installed the production in the empty sanctuary of a black stone gothic church in Highland Park (now the Union Project).

Fall 2003

Firebugs by Max Frisch
September 18-28 Wednesday-Sunday 8PM
Firebugs takes place in a town victimized by arsonists. In the middle of the neighborhood panic, local businessman Gottleib Biedermann houses two menacing strangers in his attic, thus allowing his active denial to become an accomplice to a town disaster. Though this dark, hilarious political parable is over 50 years old, its commentary on humankind's moral flaccidity and capacity for self-deception strikes at the heart of our time as well. The company installed the production at Engine House 25 a turn-of-the-century firehouse in the Strip District, now the photography studio of board member Duane Rieder.

Fall 2004

Holler by David Turkel - World Premiere
May 1-19 Wednesday-Sunday 8PM
Seventeen months and one ton of aluminum in the making, Holler tells the story of Bill, a morally compromised West Virginia mechanic and petty criminal whose only source of goodness lies in his younger, simpler brother, Joe. Bricolage turned the Brew House's IAC Performance Garage into an ominous West Virginia trailer park, complete with automobile skeletons, nosy neighbors, and an actual trailer, hauled in and cut up to fit the Brew House's raw, exciting performance area. Artistic Director Jeffrey Carpenter was named one of the Post Gazette's top performers of the year for his portrayal of Bill, and according to the PG's Chris Rawson Robert Hirst's set design was "the best (he's) seen in a long time."
2005 Staged Reading Performance Series

March 2005

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
In conjunction with The Frick Art Museum's retrospective exhibit, Artistry and Innovation in Pittsburgh Glass, 1808-1882, Bricolage presented an incisive look at this Tennessee William's classic directed by City Paper's Ted Hoover in the intimate setting of The Frick Art Museum auditorium.

May 2005

Blood of the Bear by Maureen McGranaghan
Directed by Rebecca Harris
With Jeffrey Carpenter, John Gresh, Terry Parshall, Greg Coughlin, Jarod Frye, Isaac Monroe
Wood Street Gallery

June 2005

Trojan Women by Euripides
Directed by Alice Jankell
With Mary Rawson, Bingo O'Malley, Melissa Martin, David Conrad, Elena Passerello, Jeffrey Carpenter, Rebecca Harris, Karen Baum, Tami Dixon, Jen Saffron and Theo Allyn.
911 Penn Avenue

July 2005

The Word by Ian McCullough
Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
With Jason Planitzer, Liz Hammond, Chris Josephs, Nancy Bach, Tami Dixon, Patrick Jordan, Rebecca Harris, Dereck Walton. Music by Daryl Fleming.
937 Liberty Avenue

September 2005

Circumference of a Squirrel by John Walch
Directed by Tami Dixon
Featuring Jeffrey Carpenter
Wood Street Gallery - Gallery Crawl
September 30th

December 2005

B.U.S. Bricolage Urban Scrawl - One Day Play Series
This event challenged an incredible line-up of local theater artists to write, direct, perform, and present 6 new plays in one day. Each writer had 12 hours to write a 10-minute play inspired by a 90-minute journey on a city bus. The directors and actors took the next 12 hours to rehearse, memorize, stage and tech each play to debut that same evening exactly 24 hours after the first meeting.
937 Liberty Avenue 3rd floor
Featuring 40 of Pittsburgh's A-List artists

Mission: Delight - First Night (The Cultural Trust and Three Rivers Arts Festival)
A programmed group experiment in fun, Mission: Delight takes 20 people with 20 headphones on a 20-minute sensorial journey, complete with bubbles, high fives and a celebrity guest.

Building on Improv Everywhere's mission-based event programming, Bricolage designed Mission: Delight to be included in First Night 2006 for the sole purpose of making people smile. In it's subsequent incarnations Mission: Delight has grown to include group puzzle solving and mystery squares, among other youthful exercises designed to bring out your inner smirk.
937 Liberty Avenue 3rd floor
December 31st 2005

January 2006

Mission: Delight 2
A programmed group experiment in fun, Mission: Delight takes 20 people with 20 mp3 players on a 20-minute sensorial journey, complete with bubbles, high fives and a celebrity guest.

STAGED READING PERFORMANCE SERIES #1

Bricolage First Annual Staged Reading Performance Series
Committed to the vision of staging new works and re-imagined classics, we have assembled six dynamic plays for our First Annual Staged Reading Performance Series. From March through August, we will showcase a play a month featuring a total of over 90 actors, musicians, and directors, combined with minimal lighting, sound and set elements. The artists are given a week to rehearse and present, book-in-hand, their piece for two evenings. Each production is free and open to the public.

Pick Your Play
What makes Bricolage's Staged Reading Performance Series unique is the audience's participation. At the end of the six-month series, through an Internet survey, we will ask our audience for their evaluation. Whichever play receives the most enthusiastic response will become a future Bricolage full production. By engaging the audience as stakeholders in the creation of a play, the observer becomes participant, and the artistic connection between the audience and the play itself is deepened.

#1 - March 19-20, 2006

Don Juan Returns from the War (New Work)
By Odon Von Horvath, Adapted and Directed by David Maslow
A hauntingly beautifulÊadaptation, this 30's expressionist classicÊfeaturesÊDon Juan, literature's greatest romantic scoundrel, as he returns from the trenches searching for the true love he betrayed before the war. An ensemble of women play 35 roles opposite the one man trying desperately to escape the peril of his ways.

#2 - April 23-24, 2006

Peace (Pittsburgh Premiere)
By Aristophanes Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
ThisÊnew adaptation of Aristophanes'Êcomedy begins with Trygaeus, sick of war, flying to Olympus on a dung beetle to entreat the mighty Zeus to put an end to it. But Zeus has washed his hands of humanity, allowing the monster War (who has buried Peace in aÊcave) to have free rein.Ê

#3 - May 21-22, 2006

Phaedra's Love (Pittsburgh Premiere)
By Sarah Kane Directed by Melissa Martin
This dirty and dangerous retelling of the Seneca myth is a story of love and lust taken to violent extremes. Here Kane maps out the darkest and most unforgiving internal landscapes: violence, loneliness, power and love,Êin this shocking and perverseÊpolitical commentary.

#4 - June 25-26, 2006

Chicks with Dicks (Bad Girls on Bikes Doing Bad Things) - (Pittsburgh Premiere)
By Trista Baldwin Directed by Tami Dixon
This 60's B-movie parody with a twist is set in and around Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania's very own nuclear power plant. The irreverently absurd plot centers around Vespa de Amore, a prom queen runner-up ends up on the road with an all-girl biker gang. This wild ride features plenty of go-go dancing, hair pulling, mud wrestling, and kung-fu fighting as these good-girls-gone-bad get even worse!

#5 - July 30-31, 2006

Key to the Field (New Work) - Winner of the 2006 SRPS - Audience Choice
A controversial schoolteacher wakes in the middle of the night to find a brick thrown through the picture window of his suburban home. Things get worse when a police officer arrives and, instead of investigating, takes him hostage. Written to mirror the work of Rene Magritte, Key to the Field is a surrealist thrill-ride through the twisted landscape of the American dream.

#6 - August 20-21, 2006

SCarrie! The Musical (New Work)
Book by Joel Abbott, Kimmy Gatewood, Vince Gatton, Matt Morrow, and Nathan Phillips. Original Music by Joel Abbott. Directed by Matt Morrow.
A musical tale of love, menstruation, and telekinetic revenge, SCarrie is an unauthorized musical parmage (parody/homage) of the classic 70's horror film Carrie. Pigs blood, dirty pillows and gender bending run amuck while creepy Carrie suffers all the more in this warped musical romp through high school with a rockin' original 1970 score.

September 2006

Mission: Delight, New Hazlett Theatre
A programmed group experiment in fun, Mission: Delight takes 20 people with 20 headphones on a 20-minute sensorial journey, complete with bubbles, high fives and a celebrity guest.

December 2006

Mission: Delight, First Night Pittsburgh
A programmed group experiment in fun, Mission: Delight takes 20 people with 20 headphones on a 20-minute sensorial journey, complete with bubbles, high fives and a celebrity guest.

January 2007

B.U.S. 2
Bricolage Urban Scrawl Fundraiser
This event challenged an incredible line-up of local theater artists to write, direct, perform, and present 6 new plays in one day. Each writer had 12 hours to write a 10-minute play inspired by a 90-minute journey on a city bus. The directors and actors took the next 12 hours to rehearse, memorize, stage and tech each play to debut that same evening exactly 24 hours after the first meeting.
937 Liberty Avenue 1st floor
Featuring 40 of Pittsburgh's A-List artists
January 14th 7PM

STAGED READING PERFORMANCE SERIES #2

Second Annual Staged Reading Performance Series

#1 - March 18-19, 2007

Weightless by Christine Evens. Directed by Jason Nodler
Weightless explores the evolution of America where smoking is less dangerous than sunlight, the next generation of silicone is undetectable and the distinction between what is real and what can be purchased is terrifyingly distorted.
Bricolage
937 Liberty Avenue 1st Floor
8PM
Free
Spondored by B.U.S. 2

#2 - April 29-30, 2007

Dutchman by Leroi Jones (also known as Amiri Imamu Baraka)
Directed by Mark Clayton Southers
This Obie Award winning classic turned the theatre world on its head when it premiered in NYC in 1964. Poet Amiri Baraka takes us deep into the "flying underbelly of the city" where there is no hope, no heroes and no future. Where the flaws of society are deeply rooted in the white man's oppression of the black man and disastrous results occur when everybody is looking.
Bricolage
937 Liberty Avenue 1st floor
8PM
Free
Sponsored by The Bricolage Board

#3 - May 27-28, 2007

The Servant's Lament. Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
From Bricolage's resident playwright, David Turkel, who brought you last years series winner, "Key To The Field" and other favorite works such as "Holler" and "Wildsigns", comes a brand new work commissioned especially for this year's series.
Bricolage
Wood Street Galleries
8PM
Free
Sponsored by Frank Vitale

#4 - July 1-2, 2007

A Dream Play by August Strindberg. Directed by Jorge Cousineau
Anything can happen. Free from the rules of time and space, the goddess daughter of Indra travels to earth to encounter the human experience. Sprawling and limitless, her journey defies traditional logic, transforming one thing into the next. Each image of humanity and each story of suffering melds with the next, allowing Strindberg to create a vast and beautiful universe inside a dream.
937 Liberty Avenue 1st Floor
8PM
Free

#5 - July 29-30, 2007

Hamlet Up Close
Directed by Barbara MacKenzie-Wood
Conceived by Jim Neison and Barbara MacKenzie-Wood on an adaptation by Peter Brook
7 Actors, 142 minutes, 100 seats each night.
In the tradition of the "Chamber Shakespeare" of Trevor Nunn, Peter Brook and Mark Rylance.
Bricolage
937 Liberty Avenue 1st Floor
8PM
Free

#6 - August 19-20, 2007

Great White (World Premiere)
Libretto by Matt M. Morrow and Sean J. Palmer
Music and Lyrics by Sean J. Palmer
Directed by Matt M. Morrow
1973 America. Viscous shark attacks along the coast of Long Island put a seaside town in an economic stranglehold. This unconventional musicalization of a classic story of one man's struggle to save his marriage and community reveals the dark underbelly of capitalism and classism.
Briclolage
937 Liberty Avenue 1st Floor
8PM
Free
Sponsored by Bruce Crocker

September - October 2007

Key To the Field - (Audience Choice Winner)
Winner -#12 in the top 20 plays of 2007 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By David Turkel
Directed by Jed Harris
Starring Tami Dixon, Sam Turich and Marty Giles
A controversial schoolteacher wakes in the middle of the night to find a brick thrown through the picture window of his suburban home. Things get worse when a police officer arrives and, instead of investigating, takes him hostage. Written to mirror the work of Rene Magritte, Key to the Field is a surrealist thrill-ride through the twisted landscape of the American dream.
937 Liberty Avenue 1st Floor
$15
Wed-Sun.8PM, Sept 19-Oct 7

October 2007

In Service
Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
We often speak of war in broad, geopolitical terms, but lost in this discourse is the simple fact that war is local and personal. In the heat of battle, the soldier spends more time thinking about the compatriot sitting next to him or her than about the political questions occupying the front page of the newspaper. War is the story of one individual, your fellow Pittsburgher perhaps living next door or working in the next office over. Their stories range from horrifying tales of tragedy to gripping accounts of peril and heroism. They deserve to be told, and we ought to listen.
Combining live performance, projected video, and still images, In Service presents first-hand experiences of local men and women serving in The Iraq War as soldiers, government officials, and war correspondents.
Harris Theatre
$20+
8pm Thursday-Sunday

March 2008

B.U.S. 3
Bricolage Urban Scrawl Fundraiser
This event challenged an incredible line-up of local theater artists to write, direct, perform, and present 6 new plays in one day. Each writer had 12 hours to write a 10-minute play inspired by a 90-minute journey on a city bus. The directors and actors took the next 12 hours to rehearse, memorize, stage and tech each play to debut that same evening exactly 24 hours after the first meeting.
937 Liberty Avenue 1st floor
Featuring 40 of Pittsburgh's A-List artists
March 15th 7PM

STAGED READING PERFORMANCE SERIES #3

Third Annual Staged Reading Performance Series

#1 - March 30-31, 2008

Midnight Radio by Jeffrey Carpenter and Tami Dixon.
Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
Part Rocky Horror Picture Show, part Prairie Home Companion, Bricolage introduces Midnight Radio. Featuring classic radio dramas and comedy sketches, music, and live Foley sound effects, this dynamic evening is sure to take you back to the days when radio was king and your imagination was your own.

#2 - April 27-28, 2008

Woman From the Past by Roland Schimmelfinneg
Directed by Melaniie Dreyer
On the eve of a new life overseas, Frank sits surrounded by moving boxes. He has everything, a beautiful wife, a happy son, a great job. Until he opens his front door and discovers a long forgotten highschool sweetheart, who has returned to collect on a promise he made 24 years ago.

#3 - May 18-19, 2008

Floating Under Water by France Luce Benson
Directed by Kathleen Amshoff
On a remote island where lust and fantasy are sold, a young Haitian woman sets out on a journey to uncover the truth of her dark past. She is guided by a Goddess of the sea into a lush world of haunting and healing images that propel her to rise above the surface of emotional bondage, giving birth to an inner strength that had been silenced for years. Using the language of Haitain folklore, surreal imagery, and brutal realism, Floating Underwater is a story of redemption, empowerment, and forgiveness.

#4 - June 29-30, 2008

Stroke by David Turkel. Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
A wealthy gentleman's sudden illness puts pressure on his daughter's marriage prospects. But when one of the young girl's suitors runs screaming from the house, her mother begins to wonder if the family's future rests in the hands of a monster. Resident playwright David Turkel takes us into the world of Europe in the fin de siecle-- an era where gender politics, psychology, and eroticism are all poised on the brink of explosion.

#5 - July 27-28, 2008

Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter
Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion Thersites
It is the seventh year of the siege of Troy by Agamemnon and his Greeks. The conflict is at a stalemate and dissension is growing in both camps. By turns shocking, uproarious, and impassioned Troilus and Cressida is a bitterly satirical, thoroughly modern exploration of politics, brutality, vanity, double standards, and doomed love played out against the background of a senseless war which no one seems to know how to bring to an end.

#6 - August 24-25, 2008

Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom - (Audience Choice Winner)
by Jennifer Haley
Directed by Matt M. Morrow
In a suburban subdivision with identical houses, parents find their teenagers addicted to an online horror video game. The game setting? A subdivision with identical houses. The goal? Smash through an army of zombies to escape the neighborhood for good. But as the line blurs between virtual and reality, both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own.

#7 - September 27-28, 2008

The 5th Column
by Ernest Hemingway
Directed by Mladen Kiselov
Ernest Hemingway was one of the twentieth century's most important novelists, as well as a brilliant short story writer and foreign correspondent. Join Bricolage as we present Hemingway’s only full-length play, The Fifth Column -not the dramatization of a novel or story-but a drama written for the stage that brilliantly evokes the tumultuous Spain of the 1930s. These works, which grew from Hemingway's adventures as a newspaper correspondent in and around besieged Madrid, movingly portray the effects of war on soldiers, civilians, and the correspondents sent to cover it.

October-November 2008

March 2009

B.U.S. 4
Bricolage Urban Scrawl Fundraiser
This event challenged an incredible line-up of local theater artists to write, direct, perform, and present 6 new plays in one day. Each writer had 12 hours to write a 10-minute play inspired by a 90-minute journey on a city bus. The directors and actors took the next 12 hours to rehearse, memorize, stage and tech each play to debut that same evening exactly 24 hours after the first meeting.
937 Liberty Avenue 1st floor
Featuring 40 of Pittsburgh's A-List artists
March 21st 7PM

Summer 2009

Midnight Radio
Our first annual late-night summer series, Midnight Radio – a monthly episodic “live” radio series, set after hours, complete with honey-voiced announcers, commercial breaks, vintage vinyl sound effects and a myriad of “Foley” props. Each Midnight Radio episode features the unique talents of Pittsburgh writers, musicians, actors, comics, and “city celebrities." Think Prairie Home Companion on Red Bull.

As a special feature the audience gets to choose by secret ballot which serials will continue to the September finale “smackdown,” where the writers left standing will compete for cash prizes and the opportunity to air their serial on 91.3 WYEP.

Episode #1 June 26th - 27th

Episode #2 July 24th - 25th

Episode #3 August 21st - 22nd

Episode #4 October 2nd - 3rd "The Radio Series Smackdown"

October-November 2009

Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom - (Audience Choice Winner)
by Jennifer Haley
Directed by Matt M. Morrow
In a suburban subdivision with identical houses, parents find their teenagers addicted to an online horror video game. The game setting? A subdivision with identical houses. The goal? Smash through an army of zombies to escape the neighborhood for good. But as the line blurs between virtual and reality, both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own. Oct 30-Nov 28, 2009

April-May 2010

Speech & Debate
by Stephen Karam
Three teenage misfits in Salem, Oregon discover they are linked by a sex scandal that’s rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio’s connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music. April 24-May 8, 2010

Additional Programming

American Shorts Reading Series
Initially funded through a Sprout Grant, Bricolage was a founding partner with local artist Suzanne Pace in the development of this reading series where short works of American fiction are read by local community leaders, artists, actors, musicians, and community members in classic Pittsburgh locations. The series was so successful that it has been incorporated into the Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures series and has just completed its third full season.

Scenes From A Car
Designed to bring integrity to text-based performances presented in large gatherings, Bricolage used The Cultural Trust's Cosmopolitan Pittsburgh Rooftop Party as the inaugural setting for Scenes From A Car. Bricolage brought theatre to its most intimate level yet with this exciting and innovative theatrical experience. Staged inside Flex Car cars parked on the roof of The Theatre Square Parking Garage, audiences got an intimate viewing of famous car scenes from three popular movies, Thelma and Louise, Freeway and Carrie. Audiences in the back seats, actors performing in the front seats, there's no getting closer to the action without the audience becoming actors themselves. Hands down the hit of the Trust's event.

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