WESA: Pittsburgh performer spoofs acting coaches in new stage comedy
New Hazlett Theater | photo by Matt Dayak
Pittsburgh performer spoofs acting coaches in new stage comedy
90.5 WESA | By Bill O’Driscoll
Published February 4, 2026 at 5:30 AM EST
Treasure Treasure doesn’t seem to have many complaints about her stage training. The Pittsburgh theater standout has taken performance classes since her childhood in upstate New York, and speaks glowingly of her years in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, where she graduated with a degree in musical theater.
Nonetheless, the idea of portraying a self-absorbed acting teacher has proved pretty hard to resist. Enter Agnus, the character Treasure and two collaborators created nearly a decade ago.
The drama coach who’d rather perform for her students than actually instruct them makes her Pittsburgh premiere in “Agnus Teaches Acting,” a new comedy that debuts this week as part of the New Hazlett Theater’s Community Supported Art series.
Matt Dayak
The hour-long show finds the wildly wigged, imperiously frumpy Agnus Stephenson, a never-was performer who considers herself “one of the greatest acting teachers on planet earth,” leading a class of three students.
“It’s amazing to watch you every week,” Agnus tells a student who praises her. “You come in here and I realize you’d be nothing without me. But what’s even more incredible is how humble you are about the fact that I’m a superstar.”
The students follow her lead through grounding exercises, ritualized humiliation, and scene work on Chekhov’s classic “The Seagull” — but only to a point. There are also original songs — sung, of course, by Agnus.
The students are played by Joe Kosha, Richard McBride and Wallis Lucas. The show is directed by Lucas Fedele, the theater artist and CMU dance professor who co-created Agnus and co-wrote the script with Treasure and another long-time friend, Zanny Laird.
Treasure is best known to Pittsburgh audiences for starring as Hamlet in Quantum Theatre’s 2023 outdoor production of the Shakespearean classic at the Carrie Blast Furnaces. More recently, she played Judas in Pittsburgh Musical Theater’s production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which did two weeks at the Byham Theater this past spring.
Treasure speaks reverently, in fact, of her first time on stage, at age 5 in a small role in a production of “Gypsy.”
“I knew that this was a home,” she said. “I knew that I had a special relationship with the stage, with the audience, with the workings of the stage.”
And she said her years at CMU, which she entered as a freshman in 2008, left her prepared to tackle “any script.”