Princess Jafar. Photo by Renee Rosensteel, courtesy of New Hazlett Theater
The New Hazlett Theater is thrilled to premiere pop culture phenomenon Princess Jafar’s interactive game show, The Princess Is Right!, on February 17. Written and performed by Princess Jafar, Pittsburgh’s iconic Queer Arab cartoon princess villain, The Princess Is Right! Is a hilarious game show inspired by the classic TV series and features special guest stars such as musical artists Brittney Chantele, Livefromthecity, and kidmental, as well as a host of Pittsburgh’s favorite drag queens.
“Princess Jafar has been seen from East Liberty to the South Side producing hilarious late-night talk shows,” says Director of Programming Kristin Helfrich.“We wanted to see what would happen when we supported the Princess as she created a fully produced interactive game show complete with special guests and amazing prizes. This is just the kind of pick-me-up that the Pittsburgh Arts community needs in the middle of winter! Don’t miss it!”
Creator, hostess, and bona fide Pittsburgh royalty Princess Jafar incorporates themes from 90’s pop culture and queer influences to create genre-bending, hilarious original productions. She is also an LGBTQ+ advocate and active fundraiser, raising over $25,000 for Queer Pittsburgh artists of Color since 2017. ThePrincess is Right! not only gives audience members the opportunity to win real prizes but Princess Jafar will also award $500 to the charity of a winner’s choice.
“Even though we are still playing with TV show formats of old sitcoms and late-night specials like we have in past productions, this show differs from other Princess Jafar shows because it focuses on the game show element,”Princess Jafar toldPittsburgh City Paper in a recent article. “Our goal with The Princess Is Right is to give back to the audiences who have made it through a few very tough years.”
The Princess is Right! has three showings only: Thursday, February 17 at 8 p.m. and Friday, February 18 at 11 a.m. & 8 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase on the New Hazlett website. Tickets range from $15–$25 but Allegheny County library cardholders can reserve $5 tickets to the Friday matinee through RadPasss.org.
This production is part of the Theater’s 2021/22 Community Supported Art Performance Series (CSA), which provides emerging artists with the opportunity to develop new work for the New Hazlett stage. Each year the CSA supports five emerging Pittsburgh artists as they develop a new work for the New Hazlett stage. The artists featured in the 2021/22 season range from up-and-coming playwrights to inventive musicians to a sassy Queen with a heart of gold.Past CSA contributors include recording artist Brittany Chantele, choreographer Kaylin Horgan, and director/playwright Tlaloc Rivas. Through the CSA program, the New Hazlett Theater provides opportunities for diverse voices to shape the future of theater and connect audiences with fresh productions that challenge their expectations of what theater can do.
In order to ensure a safe experience for all audience members, masks, photo ID, and proof of vaccination are required. Read the most updated safety guidelines on the New Hazlett website. Accessible seating and assistive listening devices are available for all productions.
Win Cash, a Bus Pass, and a Washer and Dryer with Princess Jafar
“The Princess is Right” at the New Hazlett Theater
Photos by Renee Rosensteel
Princess Jafar is back with The Princess is Right! An Interactive Game Show, a game show where possibly everyone is a winner. A few things to know before you click buy on that ticket button: Princess Jafar is immortal. There will be a ton of guests. And you can win cash.
The performance is part of the New Hazlett Theater’s CSA series. There are three performances on Thursday, Feb. 17 at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. and Friday, Feb. 18 at 8pm. For tickets and more info, click here.
We had a fantastic time chatting with Princess Jafar, so let’s jump into it.
David Bernabo: The Princess Is Right. What is it about?
Princess Jafar: I like to say, You’re the next contestant on The Princess Is Right. Come down, get in the hot seat, win some cool cash and some hot prizes.The Princess Is Right is Pittsburgh’s chance to be part of those big Hollywood game shows, to be in the audience, to win prizes, to jump out of your seat, to show the world that you know how much cold cream costs. I wanted to bring Pittsburgh’s audiences alive. You might have seen it at your own shows, Dave, where people are a little too cool for school in Pittsburgh crowds, and I wanted to hack that and think of a way where I can actually get the audience members jumping out of their seats and super excited for the show. Not only that, but a way to get them to clamor for tickets. In Pittsburgh, I feel a lot of people get their tickets day of, night before. I want everyone to buy their tickets right away so that they can have a chance to fly around the world, win money, or win a washer and dryer set.
Right now, I think it’s kind of an awkward time to be asking my audiences for their funds, for their ticket prices, for their merch money. The way my community is shown, its very working class, genderqueer, people of color. So I want to give back. I want to give away cash and prizes, but also I want to give away a bus pass for the year. I want to give away a lead filtering drinking system to get the lead out of the water. Just kind of use this show as a way to give back and to do some things that the government won’t do. Provide public transportation, get lead out of water, give people cash during a pandemic. Because I want to be the the ruler of the world, so I have to start here in Pittsburgh and give my citizens what they need, which in this case is drinkable water and money to survive.
DB: What’s appealing about the game show format? I feel like a lot of your performances have this TV aspect.
PJ: Yeah, you’re right. I like to base my shows off of TV shows. I like to base them off of shows that would have existed in the 80s and 90s. A sitcom pilot was our first show. Then we did a live talk show that was based on The Joan Rivers Show and Late Night and all that. Then we did an afternoon talk show with hot button issues at Club Café.
I’m really inspired by the way some talk show hosts combine interviews, game show elements, and a musical guest. It is like modern day variety thing.
Really the the game show came together because I watch a lot of game shows. I love game shows. I’m really happy for Amazon Prime; they have all the old ones on there. Tattletales, Super Password, I’ve Got A Secret. I’m really drawn to that 80s and 90s era because that’s when I grew up, and I was obsessed with TV as a kid, but I never saw myself in those leading roles. I never saw people that looked like my friends in those roles. So with the Princess Jafar project, it’s really me putting myself into those roles I wanted as a kid that really don’t exist anymore.
It’s almost an attempt to rewrite history. I want n a few years for people to remember Princess Jafar as a 90s character. I want to create some confusion like Oh, were they actually around with Elvira and Pee Wee Herman and Hulk Hogan and all those big names? Yes. Yes, she was. Princess Jafar has been around for 500 years. She’s not going anywhere, anytime soon.
DB: Is there an element of fantasy within the game show format?
PJ: Yes, definitely, game shows in general are fantastic. There’s a reason they’re popular. People see a little chance to escape. Like when that person on TV wins a trip, I win a trip with my very simple knowledge of how much Ovaltine costs or knowing the phrase “luck be a lady” on Wheel of Fortune. You won. Good job.
In the Princess Jafar world, there’s definitely fantastical elements. We get weird with it. We get kind of surreal or uncanny at times, just to play with it, because this is artists expressing themselves on stage. It’s not the same thing as a Hollywood team of executives making a game show. This is an art show. This is an art piece. And the New Hazlett Theater encourages that.
When I was presenting this idea to the New Hazlett Theater, I didn’t want them to think it was just a straight up game show, because that could happen anywhere. I wanted them to see that it was a lot of Pittsburgh artists working together, putting their ideas together, creating this world for ourselves to act in and to be in but also for the audience to escape into.
DB: Can you talk about some of your collaborators?
PJ: Definitely. In the past, I’ve worked with some really great artists like the moon baby, Gia Fagnelli, Livefromthecity. I really like big names, people with big energies. A lot of artists are actually very shy. They’re talented introverts, and I like working with those talented extroverts who can really command the stage and have a catchy name and have their own world behind them.
So for this show, you might see some of those same faces coming back. We’re going to be visited by Brittney Chantele and Livefromthecity. And Naheen from True T and from SUPA’ N x C, which is new group in Pittsburgh. I’m working with kidmental for the first time. kidmental is a DJ who is like a Twitch streamer, really, and they create individual theme songs for people. So I was following them online, seeing all these different theme songs and jingles they were making daily, weekly, all the time for people. I was so attracted to that work ethic and that just like constant output of exciting ideas. He’s going to be my DJ but also my co-host.
Some other collaborators I’ll be working with are some drag queens from Pittsburgh. We have Agnes Senga, Maxi Pad, Lydia B. Kollins, and Andi Whorehol, and Baby T. These drag queens are actually going to be our pricing models. So they’ll be coming in with the products, with the entertainment, with the electronics, and they’ll be displaying those for us.
DB: Will there be someone building this world?
PJ: Tucker Topel is building a really beautiful game show set. During the first few talks, we were thinking of the 70s, 80s, 90s sets, which are big brown squares, orange and yellow, carpeted and all that. But as we were talking recently, it’s moved on to more of a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire set, where it’s dark, pared down, a lot of lights and screens and bright colors. It’s going to be moving into more of like a 2000s vibe with the staging.
Then for the lighting director, we have Madeleine Steineck. The lights on the game show are really important. We need the spotlights and those flashing bulbs. I’m excited to work with Madeleine for that.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the game show Press Your Luck with the whammies. I’ve started working with Goofytoof. Goofytoof is a performance artist and a graphics artist in Pittsburgh, and they’re going to be making our animated sequences for when you win or when you lose. If we have a trip, a cruise ship will come on the screen.
DB: What kind of skill level will contestants need?
PJ: I don’t think any skill level will be needed to play our game. The questions are going to be easy. I want everyone to win actually, because this is not yet a booked series where we have this happening every night. Once that happens, people can lose. But on the first episode, I might rig things a little bit and we might have more winners than losers. I want everyone to go away with the prizes. We didn’t buy the prizes for them not be taken home. Pretty much everyone will be a winner. Even if you’re a loser, we might just make you a winner anyways.
DB: Can you spotlight a few of these prizes?
PJ: One of the biggest prizes I’m excited to give away is a washer and dryer set from LG. Super nice one. Living in Pittsburgh, laundry is horrible. Either you have to pay quarters in your own building or the machines don’t work or it smells like mildew. It’s one of the worst experiences doing laundry. I want to give that prize to someone for the practicality that everyone in Pittsburgh needs a washer and dryer but also, washer and dryer sets are classic pieces that you can win on TV, and I really want to give that away.
I’ve been friends with Just Jingles — or a lot of us know Jingles as Heather — for eight, nine years. Jingles is an internationally renowned burlesque dancer, who does really funny dances — super sexy but makes it silly. One of her dances is she’s literally dressed like a washing machine. She’s like a super sexy washing machine. And I’ve been telling her for years that I want to have her on stage — she does a dance and we’re going to give away a washer and dryer set. This has been a silly little drinking idea we’ve had for years, like, oh, let’s give away a washer and dryer set. So, the washer and dryer set fulfills a trope, it meets the audience’s needs, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time with one of my longtime friends in Pittsburgh. It’s gonna be so much fun.
DB: Can you talk about your use of pop culture? I’m thinking about Disney and your interest in that.
PJ: I grew up very much the Cable Guy life where it’s just me and the TV. So when I watch home videos, it’s me watching Home Improvement. When I’m watching Christmas movies, it’s like seeing my family members at Christmas again. The TV wasn’t just our babysitter; it was our best friend. As a kid, I thought it was very important to know everything about TV. So I was obsessed with learning the 60s shows that were on and the 70s shows and the 80s shows. I’ve always felt like I’ve been playing catch up. I don’t know how people can watch shows that come out on TV this year, because I’m still in 1988. There’s still so many movies I haven’t seen from the 90s. Like, what do you mean, you’re watching Euphoria? I’m just finishing Melrose Place.
I just think we should all do media chronologically. Sorry! I just got through the 60s, we can move on now.
But pop culture means a lot to me. As I got older, and I realized I’m a Disney adult — uh oh, trigger warning, Disney adult. How do you tie this John Waters world I’m living in, in this Pittsburgh queer art scene with a trip to Disney World the next month. How do I pair that? How do I make sense of that?
So when Princess Jafar came together, it was such a blessing, because everything made sense finally. We’re gonna go in knowing you’re crass, knowing that this is for adults, even though you’re using these family entertainment themes. Once Princess Jafar was born, just all this pressure came off of me to almost explain myself. I’m also a white passing Arab. So oftentimes, I would be doing an Arab number, I’d be doing a Lebanese number, and the audience would think I was mocking Arabs. They would think I was just another white kid. So when I go in saying, Princess Jafar, it explains my gender, kind of, it explains a little bit of my nationality, and I think it also tells you that I’m going to be playing with pop culture and with these themes in a fun way, just from that one name. So I’m very happy for that.
But I like to use pop culture, because it’s a language that we all speak or that a lot of us speak. Really the New Hazlett will bring in an older crowd. My crowd is 30 year olds. The younger kids come in, the 19 and 20 year olds. So I have to make jokes that land with the 50 year old audience, the 30 year old audience, and the 20 year old audience. I will make a Carol Burnett joke, and then the next minute, I will make a joke about a gay dating app that hasn’t existed in 10 years for those 40 year olds. Yeah, I remember dudesnudes, and then I will make a Euphoria joke, even though I haven’t seen it. So I just like to cover my bases and watch it all and consume it all. And I, I am immortal. So I have all of time to watch all the media. So it’s my plan to do that.
Back in 2015, a new figure started to take shape on the Pittsburgh art scene. Calling herself Princess Jafar, the singer, drag artist, and performer played host to events, gathering others artists and creatives to perform alongside her. These events, titled Princess Jafar & Friends, gave stage time to various local up-and-coming artists.
Princess Jafar will take the stage again for her new show, The Princess is Right: An Interactive Game Show. Taking place at the New Hazlett Theater on Thu., Feb. 17 and Fri., Feb. 18, with showings at 11 a.m. or 8 p.m., the show will give participants a chance to win fabulous trips, cold hard cash, and other prizes.
“Even though we are still playing with TV show formats of old sitcoms and late-night specials like we have in past productions, this show differs from other Princess Jafar shows because it focuses on the game show element,” Princess Jafar told Pittsburgh City Paper over an email. “Our goal with The Princess Is Right is to give back to the audiences who have made it through a few very tough years.”
In another statement, Princess Jafar expands on this, saying the show is “actually filling in for what the local government cannot do” by giving away free bus passes, lead filters for tap water, cash, and washers and dryers.
She adds that the whole cast consists of LGBTQIA people of color.
Jafar also credits working with the New Hazlett’s CSA program, and with Kristin Helfrich, René Conrad, Dylan Baker, and Phoebe Coztanza Orr, for helping to elevate the production “to a level I know the entire team is going to be extremely proud of.”
“Princess Jafar has been seen from East Liberty to the South Side producing hilarious late-night talk shows,” says New Hazlett director of programming Kristin Helfrich in a press release. “We wanted to see what would happen when we supported the Princess as she created a fully produced interactive game show complete with special guests and amazing prizes.”
Princess Jafar moved to Pittsburgh around 2012 and started cutting her teeth in bars and venues across the city as a drag performer, her original shows being described as “genre-bending, hilarious productions” incorporating themes like ’90s pop culture and queer influences.
Princess Jafar is originally from Ohio, a state that is often pitted against Pittsburgh, but Jafar says Pittsburgh is where she found home.
“Pittsburgh is the place where all my dreams have come true,” says Princess Jafar. “I grew up feeling like such an outcast as a queer Arab kid in the middle of Ohio, and it wasn’t until around 2012 or 2013 and moving to Pittsburgh that I felt the encouragement to confidently embrace myself. I’m forever grateful to the city and my friends and collaborators I’ve made here.”
Riffing on Marita Bonner’s play “The Purple Flower,” NaTasha Thompson’s “Lavender Terrace” carves out its own space
Continuing Recital’s sponsored partnership with the New Hazlett Theater, we are presenting a series of editorially-independent previews and reviews of the 2021–22 Community Supported Art (CSA) Performance Series. Below is our review of Lavender Terrace by NaTasha Thompson, a collaborative response from Recital editor David Bernabo and guest panelists Jason Baldinger and Kelsey Robinson. Read their bios at the end of the review.
By David Bernabo
In Lavender Terrace, playwright and director NaTasha Thompson updates Marita Bonner’s 1928 play, The Purple Flower, overlaying its message of identifying and overcoming oppression onto a series of specific and generalized events from the last century. With references to the Tulsa Race Massacre and the protests of the summer of 2020, Thompson walks the audience through 100 years of evolving oppression, culminating in a bracing story about gentrification and displacement. But this journey is not heavy-handed, and it is certainly not without beauty. Video, dance, and music are the main modes of storytelling, and they gracefully propel a narrative that is quite open-ended despite the origin point of the The Purple Flower. Abstraction and specificity play off each other until the third act when a tonal shift disrupts the flow of events and the audience is dropped into a poignant conversation about community and displacement. It’s fair to argue that one’s prior knowledge of the plot details of The Purple Flower alters the way Lavender Terrace is understood,but the overall effect is a hazy narrative that becomes clearer as the piece introduces and builds upon its storytelling tools.
Marita Bonner’s play The Purple Flower was first published in 1928 in The Crisis, a magazine founded by the NAACP with W. E. B. Du Bois acting as the magazine’s first editor. The play presents an allegory of racial discrimination in the United States, contrasting two populations–the Us’s and the White Devils, a controlling upper class, flush with wealth drawn from their oppression of the Us’s. The Us’s, writers Bonner, “can be as white as the White Devils, as brown as the earth, as black as the center of a poppy. They may look as if they were something or nothing.”
The play opens with a description of the Sundry White Devils; their soft hair and eyes betrayed by their red horns, red with blood, deceit, and unholy desire. “The White Devils live on the side of the hill,” writes Bonner. “On top of the hill grows the purple Flower-of-Life-at-Its-Fullest. This flower is as tall as a pine and stands alone on top of the hill. The Us’s live in the valley that lies between Nowhere and Somewhere and spend their time trying to devise means of getting up the hill.” Despite the White Devils’ claim that if the Us’s work hard enough–cultivating the valley, building the White Devils’ houses–they can ascend the hill, 200 years of, essentially, slavery have passed without progress. The books written by the White Devils do not allow the Us’s to transcend the White Devils. Money accumulated by one of the Us’s does not amount to wealth or power as the White Devils will not accept it. The White Devils continue to sing, “You stay where you are! We don’t want you up here!” The play ends on the precipice of the Us’s revolt.
I’d wager that the audience that watched Lavender Terrace saw one of two plays, depending on their familiarity of Bonner’s The Purple Flower. Prior knowledge of the play’s plot is helpful in identifying parallels between the works. For example, the beautifully rendered, papery backdrop that is divided into three rough-edged sections pulls double duty by symbolizing the hill while also acting as a fragmented projection screen. In Act I, which is a one scene video piece titled “Framing the Genesis,” the spoken line, “resting with their bodies towards Nowhere,” is audible. This line provides a clue that the soft focused figures on screen are part of the Us’s. Their backs are facing Nowhere, their heads and arms and hands are reaching toward the hill, toward Somewhere, toward a place of prosperity and, once there, equality. On its own, it’s a beautifully impressionistic film, a pleasure to watch alongside the organic sounds of piano and upright bass clipping and looping. But watching within the context of The Purple Flower adds weight to the sequence.
Interview: NaTasha Thompson discusses “Lavender Terrace,” a new multimedia interpretation of Marita Bonner’s “The Purple Flower”
By David Bernabo
Lavender Terrace is a multi-media performance that explores Marita Boner’s The Purple Flower, published in 1928. This new play tells the story of marginalized and oppressed people fighting for the right to have life at its fullest over the last eighty years in America. Lavender Terrace progresses through time, beginning in the late twenties and landing in an obscured but familiar representation of the present day.
NaTasha Thompson is a director, playwright, and North Carolina native. Much of her inspiration comes from her southern roots. She creates work that offers opportunity for productive discourse. As a result, underrepresented voices are amplified and education/awareness is increased. NaTasha holds an M.F.A in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.
Check out our interview with NaTasha Thompson below!
David Bernabo: Hi NaTasha! To start, can you introduce yourself and the piece?
NaTasha Thompson: So my name is NaTasha Thompson. I am the director and playwright for Lavender Terrace. Lavender Terrace is inspired by a play written by Marita Bonner in 1928 called The Purple Flower. The goal for Lavender Terrace is to push her original allegory forward.
DB: Can you tell me a little bit about The Purple Flower and what inspired you to draw from the text?
NT: The Purple Flower, to me, is about Black life in America in the early 20s. Marita was commenting on the changes that were happening in America at the time. You’ve got the migration of Black people coming into the North to acquire better jobs, and at the same time, a lot of rioting happening, a lot of protesting happening. So when the opportunity came to create Lavender Terrace, it felt like the right material to be working on, especially with the protests that were happening last summer and that have been happening for years. It felt like good material to engage with.
DB: The Purple Flower is rather placeless and timeless, right? Are you setting the piece in a place and time?
NT: I’m going off of the period the play was published and produced in. So I’m looking at the late 20s, mid to late 20s to present day. Our goal is to walk through almost 100 years of time. It’s not a chronological 60s, 70s, 80s sort of walk, but just to capture the essence of what Black life has been from the mid to late 20s to present day.
DB: Lavender Terrace, where’s the title come from?
NT: So the original piece is The Purple Flower and the lavender portion is the play off of that. Lavender is the less saturated color. So we may not be as vibrant and as decadent as the original, but we’re still gonna have that essence of The Purple Flower. For Terrace, there was public housing — it wasn’t a project — in North Carolina called Washington Terrace that was renovated and has its own history. And there’s something about landing on that platform of the terrace that I’m playing with the title.
DB: Can you about how the multimedia aspects of the productions play into progressing that timeline?
NT: A lot of Lavender Terrace is about experimenting and using the material as sort of a foundation but also experimenting with different mediums. Projection is going to be used in the piece. We’re using music, we’re using poetry, we’re just using everything we have to tell this story.
Continuing Recital’s sponsored partnership with the New Hazlett Theater, we are presenting a series of editorially-independent previews and reviews of the 2021–22 Community Supported Art (CSA) Performance Series. Below is our review of Meanwhile by Bryce Rabideau, a collaborative response from Recital editor David Bernabo and guest panelist Jason Baldinger. Read their bios at the end of the review.
By David Bernabo
Surrounded by milky, planetary spheres, some floating in the air, others grounded, mandolinist Bryce Rabideau speaks of the perfect song. Could a song change one’s world? Could a song change the world? It’s opening night for the ninth season of the New Hazlett Theater’s Community Supported Arts (CSA) series. Rabideau, joined by bassist Jason Rafalak and guitarist John Bagnato, present Meanwhile, an evening of acoustic, mandolin-forward music, music that is harmonically-complex, fusing elements of jazz, folk, and bluegrass into tidy compositions that never linger in one place for too long.
Over the years, the CSA series has shied away from presenting a band playing songs on a stage. As reviewers, we’ve also discouraged it. The argument being that there are plenty of places to present music in town yet few options to experiment with interdisciplinary collaborations or to attempt a bold advance into the avant-garde, especially at the scale of the New Hazlett Theater. [You can see where our reviewing biases often reside.] You can chart a progression from Mathew Tembo’s set in 2015 — it was gorgeous but basically an evening of songs — to Afro Yaqui Music Collective’s full-blown 2018 opera, Mirror Butterfly, which while rooted in song brought in an arcing storyline, dance, and martial arts. For a band, the CSA is a hell of a gig. $3,500 for two shows! Sign me up.
But this mentality also limits the potential of music. Yes, music as a very generalized artform is more mainstream than dance or theater or the spaces in-between. Music is more ubiquitous, infiltrating radio airwaves, movie soundtracks, TikTok videos, and basically every single commercial in a world that is evolving into one giant ad. But music is often cheapened by this exposure. Music and the labor needed to create it can be taken for granted. We all know that Spotify and streaming have devalued music to a point where past careers are not possible today. The music school as a market has churned out more fantastic players than the music industry cares to promote. So, why not invest in musicians? Given rehearsal space, production support, and ample time to prepare, surely a musician could extend their craft beyond what could have been achieved with a handful of after work rehearsals and a 30-minute slot sandwiched in the middle of a five-band bill.
New Hazlett Theater announces latest Community Supported Artist season
By Kimberly Rooney 高小荣 Photos by Renee Rosensteel and design by Bootstrap Design Co.
New Hazlett Theater’s 9th Season of Community Supported Art incorporates a wide range of theatrical experiences including music, theater, comedy, and multimedia.
Pittsburgh has a thriving community of artists and creatives, and New Hazlett Theater will highlight five of these artists in its ninth season of Community Supported Art.
The five shows represent a variety of media, from improvised music to an interactive game show, created by emerging artists who call Pittsburgh home. The season opens with mandolinist Bryce Rabideau’s Meanwhile from Oct. 28-29 and closes with actress and theatre-maker Bailey Lee’s Papa from April 7-8.
“We’re proud to know that the work produced at the New Hazlett contributes to the rich cultural fabric of our city,” says New Hazlett Theater executive director René Conrad.
Rabideau’s Meanwhile kicks off the season with accompaniment from Jason Rafalak on the upright bass and John Bagnato on the acoustic guitar. Together, the trio will play a suite of original songs from Rabideau, a composer and alumni of Duquesne University’s jazz guitar program.
Director and playwright NaTasha Thompson will present her multimedia performance Lavender Terrace from Dec. 2-3. The reimagining and exploration of Marita Boner’s 1928 one-act play The Purple Flower begins in the late ’20s and carries it into the present day to tell the story of marginalized and oppressed people fighting for the right to live full and fulfilling lives.
Audience members can become contestants in singer and drag queen Princess Jafar’s The Princess is Right!, taking place February 17-18. The interactive game show will give audience members and participants the chance to win trips, cash, and other prizes.
CP Photo: Kaycee Orwig
Feralcat
For those interested in more multimedia work, Feralcat’s concert Disassembly — featuring cutscenes from his original pixel art-based sci-fi/fantasy video game — will show March 17-18. The artist, saxophonist, composer, and producer explores racial identity, oppression, nostalgia, and love through a story set in the near future where an authoritarian regime’s censorship threatens communication.
Lee’s Papa will close out the series with an original play rooted in her grandfather’s experiences traveling from rural China to McKeesport. The play will explore three generations of Asian Americans’ complicated relationships in Lee’s familial hometown.
“This season’s artists represent the dynamic range of work being created in Pittsburgh, and the work speaks to our collective experiences,” New Hazlett Theater programming director Kristin Helfrich says.
CSA subscriptions are $100, which covers the cost of tickets for all five performances. Individual tickets are also available for $25 each for general admission and $15 for students and artists. Each performance has shows at 8 p.m. on both nights as well as a Friday matinee at 11 a.m.
Malcolm McGraw as Bernard “Byrd” Fuller in New Hazlett Theater’s Kalopsia The Musical
Photo: Renee Rosensteel
Wearing rose-colored glasses? It’s a phrase at the heart of Kalopsia The Musical, a new production at New Hazlett Theater focused on mental health and the culture surrounding it in the Black community. Kalopsia, the delusion of things being more beautiful than they really are, brings an important issue intertwined with comedy and song, creating a multi-layered story that keeps audiences guessing — and laughing — throughout the performance.
Written by Monteze Freeland and directed by Tomé Cousin, Kalopsia, running Oct. 7-17, originally debuted as a workshop with New Hazlett in 2017, and has now blossomed into a beautiful musical, the theater’s first performance since the pandemic closed its doors in 2020.
The musical tells the story of Bernard “Byrd” Fuller, played to perfection by Pittsburgh native Malcolm McGraw, whose coping mechanisms of escapism and fantasies, complete with dance numbers and “creative collaborators,” catch up with him as an adult. The story begins with a meeting with Byrd’s parents at his elementary school, where the subject of therapy is first discussed, leading to contention between his parents, and a disagreement on his mental health treatment. His behavior continues to escalate over the years.
Interview: Mandolinist Bryce Rabideau on the premiere of ‘Meanwhile’
By David Bernabo
If you were a regular show goer before the pandemic, you may have seen Bryce Rabideau play mandolin with Pittsburgh band Buffalo Rose. Or maybe you saw him play with the likes of Joy Ike, The Skyliners, or Bindley Hardware Company. Well, now, you have a chance to see Rabideau lead a new string trio when he opens the ninth season of the New Hazlett Theater’s CSA series with a new stage performance.
Meanwhileis an explorationof American improvised music. Accompanied by Jason Rafalak (upright bass) and John Bagnato (acoustic guitar), Rabideau employs a suite of original songs to push the limits of the acoustic string trio and create a sound that promises to be “rich, spontaneous, and undeniably fun.” Being privy to a bit of Rabideau’s solo mandolin playing while conducting the below interview, that last statement is not out of the question. The songs and the playing are quite impressive.
David Bernabo: Hi Bryce, can you tell me about your show?
Bryce Rabideau: Sure. My show is called Meanwhile.Meanwhile is an exploration of American improvised music of all sorts, using the palette of the mandolin, the upright bass, and the acoustic guitar. The show itself consists of 10 original compositions that were written specifically to defy expectations of the audience and even of the other musicians on stage. So my goal is to sort of showcase some of my musical inspirations in a way that’s exciting and thrilling and true to the genres that inspired them.
DB: I’m curious — what draws you to the string trio?
BR: I have been playing mandolin for a number of years now, and I think it’s got a lot of qualities that are just so special. It can be a percussion instrument or a stringed instrument at any given time. And timbre of the mandolin meshes beautifully with the acoustic guitar and the upright bass. They don’t get in each other’s way, harmonically, and that presents so many interesting possibilities for different sounds and different palettes to explore. So I really wanted to take just those three instruments and push them to their logical extremes; try to emulate jazz fusion, try to emulate pop music, try to take aspects of other genres that really excite me and put them in this new setting and see what happens.
“Optimism wasn’t really around me,” said Freeland. “But I remember being so optimistic as a young person. And so turning everything ugly into something beautiful. It felt like the right title for a musical.”
“Kalopsia: The Musical,” a musical comedy about a young Black man who copes with trauma by escaping into a glitzy fantasy world, premieres this week, live onstage at the New Hazlett Theater.
The show — the first in-person production at the theater since the coronavirus pandemic began — is the result of a New Hazlett artist residency by Freeland and his co-writer, composer Michael Meketa III. It’s directed by Pittsburgh-based Broadway veteran Tomé Cousin.
The cast of 11 includes Seton Hill University graduate Malcolm McGraw as Byrd, whose rich imaginary life, inspired by everything from TV variety shows to Beyoncé, features spotlights, a treated mic, and even his own backing singers, The Blue Birds.
“This play is about him falling apart and then being put back together by his community, as they also learn that they do the same thing in many different ways,” said Freeland.
Freeland, 34, is a fixture on the Pittsburgh theater scene and was recently named co-artistic director at City Theatre. He borrowed from his own life for “Kalopsia”: It’s set in Baltimore, where he grew up, and where his own nickname was “Bird” (because he picked at his food).
Meketa, 27, grew up in Johnstown and recently moved to Pittsburgh. He said the music for “Kalopsia” is a mix of traditional musical-theater styles with R&B and soul influences. The opening song, “Keep Home At Home,” expresses how Byrd’s family discourages its members from facing trauma outside of such traditional institutions as domestic life or the church.
But as Freeland says, “You can’t keep home at home. Your life spills out into the world. And it’s how you deal with that. It’s how you take it into your own grasp, and how you tell your own story.”
Much of the message is directed specifically at the Black community, he said.