WESA: Acclaimed visual artist Christine CMC Bethea debuts her first play in Pittsburgh
New Hazlett Theater | photo by Matt Dayak
Christine CMC Bethea’s play “Birthday at Tiffany’s” confronts racism with humor and empathy.
Acclaimed visual artist Christine CMC Bethea debuts her first play in Pittsburgh
90.5 WESA | By Bill O’Driscoll
Published November 20, 2025 at 5:30 AM EST
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Christine CMC Bethea started out as a writer, but she launched a career in art while hanging out with visual artists.
More recently, she was a visual artist who got into playwriting after hanging out at the August Wilson Archive.
The first fruits of her new craft will be on stage this week when her comedy “Birthday at Tiffany’s” premieres with three performances at the New Hazlett Theater’s CSA Series.
The play is set in the late 1980s, in Homewood, where young Tiffany’s enthused parents and grumpy grandfather await the arrival of guests at her seventh birthday party. Except it starts seeming increasingly unlikely the kids from her mostly white new private school will venture into their Black neighborhood — as Pops can’t help repeatedly saying he warned them.
Bethea’s background is in journalism and advertising, going back to 1980s gigs as a fashion copywriter for Kaufmann’s Department Store. She also produced promotional copy for KDKA-TV and wrote for KQV radio news.
About 35 years ago, she says, she was laid off and doing administrative writing for local artists whose work inspired her. Taking after a grandmother who quilted, she enrolled in a quilting class at the old Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
Bethea subsequently became a prominent figure in the local art scene, known for her vibrant quilts as well as mixed-media work incorporating found and discarded materials. In 2010, she founded the Geek Art/Green Innovators Festival, an annual event showcasing innovations in art and technology. She’s also a past president of Women of Visions, a group for Black women artists, and a current member of the City of Pittsburgh’s Public Art and Civic Design Commission.
Art, she says, “is how everybody knows me. And the writing part just kept fading back and back and back.”