PREVIEW: Local Singles

Continuing Recital’s sponsored partnership with the New Hazlett Theater, we are presenting a series of editorially-independent previews and reviews of the 2021 Community Supported Art (CSA) Performance Series. Below is our review of Local Singles by Nick Navari, a collaborative response from Recital editor David Bernabo and guest panelists Jason Baldinger and Ariel Xiu. Read their bios at the end of the review, and read our preview of the performance here.

Review: “Local Singles” Navigates the Line Between Support and Dependence

By David Bernabo

In Nick Navari’s debut musical Local Singles, a support group for the lonely acts as the catalyst and the witness to a series of major and minor life changes — pregnancy, break-ups, and miscarriage. The cheery veneer of Navari’s upbeat piano-driven pop songs works in conjunction with comical gags and heartwarming moments, but also creates an interesting dissonance with the more complex and tragic events that take place. Snappy dialogue and strong acting allow Local Singles to move swiftly through both inspired and muddled plot points as characters navigate the line between support and dependence.

Virtual curtains open. The camera, aided by a lively Steadicam, follows Penny (Sarah Chelli) as she paces around her bed. It’s night, and her boyfriend just walked out after she told him that she’s pregnant. There’s panic in her voice as she comes to accept her situation, singing, “it’s just you, it’s just me, and this pain”. Despite the panic, the music is uplifting, poppy, and oddly hopeful.

The lights brighten and Johnmichael Bohach’s excellent scenic design is revealed — a tall arc of chairs resembling a nest. There’s a sense of the magical in the set design, but it still reflects the back room, grassroots vibe of a YMCA community room, which is where the bulk of this 90ish minute musical takes place.

The support group is hosted by married couple Nancy (Sydnee Elder) and Richard (Seth Laidlaw). Prior to the beginning of the story, the only attendee of the meetings is Jack (Emmanuel Elliot Key), a young-ish man still reeling from a high school crush — his teacher. Wes (Adam Marino), recently single and looking to attend the “Hot Local Singles” meetup down the hall, arrives and Jack guilts him into staying at the decidedly not hot, nor cold “Local Singles” meeting. Penny arrives shortly after Wes, and the team is assembled.

Navari, who wrote the book, lyrics and score structures the musical as a series of scenes that build to a song. Each scene/song combo delves into the characters’ hopes, desires, and fears. We get a good amount of backstory — except for Richard, who is given a heartwarming speech near the end—which allows the cast to define their characters, map out their emotional extremes, and play with nuance. While most scenes take place in the same location — the YMCA room — there is care to build in a memorable prop or formation to keep scenes from blurring into each other. There’s a great sequence with multiple mirrors reflecting characters at different angles and viewpoints. Another moment finds everyone sitting on cajons banging out the rhythm track while discussing their pasts.

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Milton

‘Milton’ is a movement biography of Pittsburgh attorney and minister Milton Raiford

By Sara Bauknecht

Artists find their muses in unexpected places. Choreographer/dancer Kaylin Horgan found hers, Homewood-bred attorney and ordained minister Milton Raiford, while teaching him to dance.

She met him nearly a decade ago during preparations for a fundraiser based on TV dance shows like “Dancing with the Stars.” Horgan was paired with Raiford and tasked with teaching him dance moves.

“He was like nobody I’d ever met before,” she said. When he walked in for his dance class, he was not in the mood, she said. But by the end, “he was very much touched by the movement and the openness of improvisational dance and sat me down and said, ‘We’ll be connected forever.’”

This week, Horgan will premiere online “Milton,” an evening-length biographical movement work based on Raiford’s life. It will be available for screening Thursday and Friday at newhazletttheater.org as part of the New Hazlett Theater’s Community Supported Art performance series. Horgan said Raiford has made her feel like part of his family.

“Throughout the years, he’s told me so many stories about his childhood and how he grew up,” she said. “He’s very transparent about the things he has had to go through from the past.”  She’s heard stories about the time his mother dropped him off in New York City, leaving him to find his way to a boarding school in upstate New York. He was one of the first Black students to attend the Millbrook School for Boys.

He encountered taboos surrounding interracial relationships and the cruelty of racism. Bits of those stories inspired Horgan to create “Lion & Lamb” in 2019 as part of a residency at The Space Upstairs in Point Breeze. It’s a shorter piece about a relationship between a young Black man and a white girl.

“Once that started, it kind of just spun [from there]. I wanted to try to tell the whole story,” she said.

She’s been impacted by what led him into a career in criminal law, as well as what happens when you get caught up in it. Raiford graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and the Duquesne University School of Law, and was a successful defense attorney. But in 1994 he was disbarred for obstruction and falsifying records after having an imposter give testimony that his real client was unwilling to give — and that ultimately caused trouble for the real client, according to a Post-Gazette report.

In 2010, after prominent witnesses and the prosecutor in his case testified that he was a changed and redeemed man, he was reinstated as an attorney. His father, a hardworking pillar of the community and World War II veteran, was there to see it. He died a year later.

“His life is a testimony to so many people’s ways of being redeemed and redeeming themselves,” Horgan said. “It’s a universal lesson: You can do the worst things in the world but you should still have the opportunity to stand up and heal. Everybody should have that grace.”

READ THE FULL PREVIEW HERE

PREVIEW: Milton

Recital continues our partnership with the New Hazlett Theater by publishing a preview and an editorially-independent review for the five performances in the 2021 CSA Performance Series season.  Throughout the season, Recital is meeting with each of the artists to bring you a brief profile of them and their work in the days before their opening performance. We will publish a considered review for each performance, developed from post-show discussions with a consistent panel of local experts in related disciplines.

Preview: Kaylin Horgan sets attorney Milton Raiford’s life to movement

By David Bernabo

In 2011, Pittsburgh attorney Milton Raiford took to the stage to venture into the world of improvised dance. The event was the August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble’s annual fundraiser So You Think They Can’t Dance — a play on the popular TV show Dancing With The Stars — where Pittsburgh celebrities were paired with company dancers. Raiford was paired with Kaylin Horgan, then a company member who previously honed her improv chops while dancing in Pearlann Porter’s Pillow Project. The story of the lead-up to that performance along with vignettes from Raiford’s life inform Horgan’s new dance piece Milton.
Milton is the second performance in the eighth season of the New Hazlett Theater’s CSA performance series. Three showings of the piece will occur on April 8 and 9, 2021.

In Milton, the audience sees Raiford at different points in his life — a fifth-grade Raiford (played by Daijaun Marshman) wins the spelling bee; a teenage Raiford (played by LaTrea Derome) enters into an interracial relationship. Speaking of the relationship, Horgan says, “For her, protest is being with this guy and standing up for this love. For him, he realizes that his protest is his success.” The audience also sees fictionalized examples of court cases.

Another layer in Milton includes music by Pittsburgh-based musicians Brittney Chantele and Treble NLS. “Brittney and Treble’s music and voices will be internal conversations that are happening throughout the show.” Horgan recently collaborated with Chantele and Treble NLS in 2019 at Chantele’s CSA performance.

READ THE FULL PREVIEW HERE

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Talks Local Singles

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed CSA Artist Nick Navari about all things “Local Singles.”

Pittsburgh-set filmed musical ‘Local Singles’ to premiere at New Hazlett

By Tyler Dague

When it comes to writing and composing a stage musical, Nick Navari makes the time no matter what he’s doing.

He sang songs and tried out dialogue and recorded it in his car during his commute to work Downtown from his home in Pine. On his lunch breaks, he wrote at Einstein Bros. Bagels on Grant Street. On his ride home, he would record more songs and dialogue.

“When I got home, I would give myself an hour to eat dinner with my family, which they were probably appreciative of. I would head upstairs to listen to the one to three hours of footage I had recorded and tried to put it into the new score or transcribe it or try to play it on the piano to see if anything worked,” he said.

The product of all that work, the musical “Local Singles,” makes its digital premiere at 8 p.m. Thursday and 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Friday at newhazletttheater.org. Tickets are pay as you like.

The ensemble musical centers on Penny, a pregnant woman who discovers the last support group for lonely people in Pittsburgh after her boyfriend leaves her. The five people in the support group may not find love or happiness, but amid the ups and downs of life, they find each other.

The idea came to Navari when a friend of a friend went to a singles group at a church in 2016. In the summer of 2019, the story became a six-month project consuming his hours when he wasn’t working as an investment research analyst.

The music of “Local Singles” has the pop-rock flair of contemporary musicals. Navari said he took inspiration from Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years” and the Tony-Award winning musical “Once.” He played an hour’s worth of the score with commentary for Pittsburgh Fringe Festival’s virtual events in May.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

TribLIVE Covers Local Singles

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review went behind the scenes of Local Singles with creator Nick Navari.

Pittsburgh dating scene inspires New Hazlett Theater’s ‘Local Singles’

By Shirley McMarlin

He heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend — and it inspired him to write a musical.

The playwright is Nick Navari of Pine, the musical is “Local Singles” and the story is about a support group for local singles.

“A friend of mine told me about a friend who was going through some things in a church singles group,” said Navari, 24. “Some of it was funny and some of it was really sad.”

Although the resulting work is “completely fictional,” he said, the friend’s story “got my wheels turning.”

The New Hazlett Theater in Pittsburgh’s North Side will stream a filmed version of “Local Singles” at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 11 a.m. Friday via Crowdcast.

The project was funded through the theater’s Community Supported Art Performance Series.

“‘Local Singles’ follows the five members of the last-surviving support group for lonely people in Pittsburgh,” Navari said. “When Penny’s boyfriend makes a rushed exit out of her life after learning of her pregnancy, she turns to the group for answers — and leaves with something unexpected.

“I was intrigued by the idea of characters seeking romantic love, only instead to realize their happiness in finding familial love outside of the typical family unit,” he said.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Local Singles on 90.5 WESA

90.5 WESA interviewed CSA Artist Nick Navari in preparation for the debut of his new pop-musical “Local Singles.”

Lonely Pittsburgh Singles, Singing, In New Musical By Area Composer

By Bill O’Driscoll

The New Hazlett Theater presents “Local Singles”: 8 p.m. Thu., March 25, and 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Fri., March 26

Navari’s debut stage work, “Local Singles,” premieres this week courtesy of the New Hazlett Theater’s Community Support Art Performance Series. The production airs as an online film Thursday and twice Friday.

Navari starting writing and composing “Local Singles” a few years ago, he said, largely in stolen moments – humming prospective melodies during his car commute, writing on his lunch break. The show was inspired by horror stories he heard from friends about their experiences in a local singles group.

“That got my wheels turning about what would happen if we had this group of just like misfits and oddballs,” he said. “Just playing with the idea of that singles group was a delight for me and I just thought, ‘Let’s just run with it and see what happens.’”

“I was fascinated by people coming to a group looking for romantic love, but instead finding this familial love outside of the typical family unit,” he added. A second-act tragedy tests the group in new ways, he said.

The show, with its pop-rock-style tunes, debuted online in 2020, when Navari performed them from his living room as part of the virtual Pittsburgh Fringe festival. The full production opens the eighth season of the New Hazlett’s subscription series that nurtures new stage works.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

PREVIEW: Local Singles

Recital continues our partnership with the New Hazlett Theater by publishing a preview and an editorially-independent review for the five performances in the 2021 CSA Performance Series season.  Throughout the season, Recital is meeting with each of the artists to bring you a brief profile of them and their work in the days before their opening performance. We will publish a considered review for each performance, developed from post-show discussions with a consistent panel of local experts in related disciplines.

Preview: Nick Navari brings new musical “Local Singles” to New Hazlett Theater

By David Bernabo

Online Speed Dating! 55+ and single?! Horny Singles in Pittsburgh!
Are you educated and single? Casual hookups! Cookery Class Dates!
Single and Ready To Mingle! Saturday Singles Dress-Up!

You may have noticed a drift towards the virtual in the local dating scene. Where meet-ups used to happen in bars and at parties, now online dating plays a much larger role. The pandemic hasn’t helped, stranding a number of local singles in their homes. Singles nights, whether at a church or community center or neighborhood wine bar, have been on a steady decline, although a vaccine-fueled renaissance may be on the horizon for late summer. So, it’s fitting that playwright and musician Nick Navari’s new musical Local Singles is set in Pittsburgh’s last surviving support group for the lonely. Over a series of meetings, five singles will gather, bond, and attempt to leave their loneliness behind them.

“Unlike what the title suggests, they’re looking for love, but not in a typical way,” says Navari. “I tried to write something that surprised me; something that I don’t often see in media or theatre. I wanted to talk about familial love that happens outside of a family unit and how that can grow unexpectedly.”

READ THE FULL PREVIEW HERE

REVIEW: The Dragon of Polish Hill

Continuing Recital’s sponsored partnership with the New Hazlett Theater, we are presenting a series of editorially-independent previews and reviews of the 2019–2020 Community Supported Art (CSA) Performance Series. Below is our review of The Dragon of Polish Hill by Dave English and Will Schutze, a collaborative response from Recital editor David Bernabo and guest panelists Jason Baldinger, NaTasha Thompson, and Ariel Xiu. Read their bios at the end of the review. And read our preview of the performance here. (Full disclosure: After the postponement of the original production of The Dragon of Polish Hill, Dave English and I collaborated on video piece advocating for the Carnegie Museum workers’ efforts to form a union. English also performed in my band Watererer’s release show video.)

Review: The Dragon of Polish Hill Ascends!

Dave English and Will Schutze turn their puppet performance into a film.

By David Bernabo

In The Dragon of Polish Hill, puppeteers Dave English and Will Schutze reconstruct the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Polish Hill, fill it with characters, and offer viewers a fantastical story of half-remembered history, culture clashes, and unexpected friendships. Leaning into the limitations forced on theater performances during the COVID-19 pandemic, their intended puppet play is transformed into a film where multiple camera angles allow for a closer look at the beautifully-rendered puppets and their magically lifelike movements. The production team retain a rawness, a Pittsburgh-ness, if you will, to the film that matches the charmingly handmade look of the set designs. While the plotline is relatively linear and predictable, the work, like the neighborhood it reconstructs, is complex, pulling weighty topics like cancel culture, casual racism, gentrification, and commercial exploitation into its quick-witted, playful realm.

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE

Photography by Renee Rosensteel

Continuing Recital’s sponsored partnership with the New Hazlett Theater, we are presenting a series of editorially-independent previews and reviews of the 2019–2020 Community Supported Art (CSA) Performance Series. Below is our review of Terminer by Philip Wesley Gates, a collaborative response from Recital editor David Bernabo and guest panelists Jason Baldinger, Emma Vescio, and Samir Gangwani. Read their bios at the end of the review. And read our preview of the performance here.

Review: Subverting Our Robot Overlords! Gil Teixeira Finds a Balance with Technology

By David Bernabo

Check the e-mail. Click the link. Register. “You’re almost in.” Maximize the window. There! The empty stage, a thing of beauty after these many months of self-imposed isolation, these months of watching artists performing in their bedrooms from the comfort of our own bedrooms. The anticipation for the professionally-staged virtual performance isn’t quite the same as sitting in the theater, surrounded by other eager viewers, but it is palpable, especially for this performance, which draws inspiration from one of the most esoteric dilemmas in human existence.

Gil Teixeira’s The Mind-Body Problem continues the delayed seventh season of New Hazlett Theater’s CSA program by providing surprising clarity to a minefield-like issue — our relationship with technology.

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE

Photography by Renee Rosensteel

Recital continues our partnership with the New Hazlett Theater by publishing a preview and an editorially-independent review for the five performances in the 2019–20 CSA Performance Series season.

Throughout the season, Recital is meeting with each of the artists to bring you a brief profile of them and their work in the days before their opening performance. We will publish a considered review for each performance, developed from post-show discussions with a consistent panel of local experts in related disciplines.

Thinking and Existing Things: Gil Teixeira debuts “The Mind-Body Problem”

by David Bernabo

Join Our Mailing List

Join Our Mailing List
Would you like to volunteer at the Theater?