Culture Archives - Page 23 of 39 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Rich Performances Buoy City Theatre’s “Ironbound”

Imagine “Waiting for Godot” set in a New Jersey bus stop. It’s hardly a rarefied trope, as I’m sure many of us have thought we might as well be waiting for Godot while marooned in some cold, lonely place, praying for a bus to appear. Playwright Martyna Majok has taken this conceit and turned it …

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History

Pittsburgh to Gettysburg

by Kellie B. Gormly

During a muggy June in 1863, Civil War-weary Pittsburghers panicked at rumors that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was marching his Army of Northern Virginia toward Pennsylvania. The rumors, as we now know a century and a half later, were indeed true—although Pittsburgh was about 200 miles west of the small farming town of Gettysburg …

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History

South Park Cascades, Circa 1931

by Jennifer McNulty

South Park, a 2,013-acre Allegheny County Park in the South Hills has all the features one might expect: trails, picnic groves, ball fields, and even a golf course. In more recent years, modern updates have included a wave pool, ice skating rink, skate park, nature center and a dek hockey rink—expanding the recreational offerings. However, …

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Books

Summer Reading List

by John Allison

The forces of the universe have a dark sense of humor. Just weeks before the publication of The Schenley Experiment, Jake Oresick’s revealing history of Pittsburgh’s first public high school, PMC Property Group began to advertise Schenley Apartments, which occupy the former school. “A truly unique historic property modernized to exceed your expectations,” the website …

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Opinion

Marital Secrets

by Elizabeth Wiethorn

If there is one thing I have learned after being married for 17 years, it is that every marriage has secrets. Anybody who tells you different has never been married. Most secrets can be classified into three categories: Benign: “I don’t see what the big idea is, a lot of middle-aged men collect ‘Hello Kitty’ …

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Opinion

Investigating a Suicide. Me?

by Tim Menees

As the sergeant drank cheap whiskey one night at the NCO Club on Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, his wife overdosed on pills. Because suicide is a homicide, the Office of Special Investigations on base, meaning my two colleagues and me, got the case. The base security police had roped off their trailer, and …

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PQ Poem

Poetry

by Ed Ochester

I too dislike it the mystified truisms the dusty puzzle-prunes the theatrical exaggerations: “the brutal crescendo of woodworms”– yet I think of O’Hara’s delight in the endless pleasures of quotidian life and Duhamel throwing a dozen balls in the air and juggling them all Frank said only a few poems are as good as the …

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Arts

Quantum Strikes Again with “Collaborators”

by Stuart Sheppard

Just as Colette could say, “There are no ordinary cats,” one could say that there are no ordinary productions from Quantum Theatre. “Collaborators,” the 2011 play by John Hodge (who also wrote the adaptation of the film, “Trainspotting”) is violently alive in a way so few new plays are these days, merging comedy and pathos …

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Arts

Warhol Brings Báez’s Powerful “Bloodlines” to Pittsburgh

by Vicky A Clark

The Andy Warhol Museum’s first two exhibitions of the year are a great pairing. Jessica Beck’s excellent My Perfect Body brought together work from Warhol’s entire career that focused on body issues, from the nose picking and acne of his youth to the scars from being shot in 1968 to images of bodybuilders and Christ. …

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Opinion

The Newspapers & Rico the Baker

by Tim Menees

Pittsburgh’s old morning newspaper was the small dog in town—feistier, funkier, more colorful, more daring and, compared to the larger afternoon paper, far more fun. Its “personnel department” was Agnes who worked in an alcove full of office machines from the Roosevelt years. The Teddy Roosevelt years. Ray took over. He was bright, funny, had …

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Arts

PICT Classic Theatre Triumphs with Fresh, Exhilarating Treatment of Oedipus Rex

by Stuart Sheppard

Although thirteen ancient Greek poets wrote Oedipus tragedies, only Sophocles’ play, “Oedipus Rex,” has survived. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote a version, as did Julius Caesar. So did the 17th century poet John Dryden, as well as the 18th century philosopher Voltaire. It has been a foundational story of Western consciousness since Homer referenced it …

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Arts

Reflections on “1984” in 2017

by Stuart Sheppard

Critics have argued that we cannot evade Shakespeare’s influence on our conception of human nature, nor Freud’s influence on our understanding of psychology, and I would suggest, as a corollary, that we cannot escape George Orwell’s influence on our notion of the political. The Orwellian ethos, manifested in works such as his final novel, “1984”, …

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PQ Poem

Assisted Living

by Barbara Edelman

“Every simile’s an insurrection” (unknown) Her phone is like a cordless baby. Her children are a blur of programmed digits. Each week she learns new rituals to survive, from toothbrush to spoon. Her softball glove, her Raleigh 3-speed are not even memory. Her new sports are dress, food, hygiene. A slalom course to every doorknob. …

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Opinion

Train Shows & Guys

by Tim Menees

When they hit male menopause, some men buy a sports car, or a sailboat, or take off with a young woman named Amber. Others take the cheaper and more benign route: buy electric trains and go to train shows. A local volunteer fire department held one Sunday and it was jammed, mainly by men who …

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Arts

CMU Brings Vivid Life to Marlowe’s Great Work

by Stuart Sheppard

Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama manages to combine some of the strongest and rarest elements of great theatre in their production of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II”: rawness, mystery, risk and precision. This is the kind of performance of a classic play that eschews the pitfalls of tired masterpieces, and instead, evokes its subject like …

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Opinion

Reunion-ited (And it Feels OK)

by Elizabeth Wiethorn

I recently attended my 30-year high school reunion, or as I affectionately call it—Operation “Glory Days.” Quite the surreal experience, and one I approached with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. High school was a weird time for me. I was incredibly self-conscious, didn’t really have a ton of friends, and was never a member …

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Arts

Local Artists: Struggling, But Not Starving

by Julia Fraser

Most Pittsburgh artists are getting by financially but find it difficult to make a living off of their art alone. And African American artists are much less likely than their white counterparts to rely on their art as their sole means of support, according to recent survey. The findings are based an online survey of …

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History

New Housing, 1951

by Jennifer McNulty

Photographer Clyde “Red” Hare moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 to work on the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, covering the city’s Renaissance I, with noted editor Roy Stryker. Hare had his own car and camera and Stryker offered to pay him $50 a week to photograph the city. During that time, Hare made this photograph of new …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh Dark and Light

by PQ Staff

Depending where you look, you can get two different views of Pittsburgh’s economy. On the gloomy side of the street, Pittsburgh dramatically underperformed its 15 benchmark regions last year. We had virtually zero job growth. We had the highest unemployment rate. And our average weekly wages rose just .8 percent—only a third of the benchmark …

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Books

Short Takes: “Leave Me” “Perpetual Carnival”

by John Allison

Pittsburghers could read “Leave Me” for the same reasons they’d see a movie filmed and set here. It’s a kick to see the city as a backdrop, collecting references to your favorite coffee shop (Commonplace in Squirrel Hill), local slogans (“I Bleed Black and Gold”) and outright praise (“she stared out the window at the …

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Books

A Well-Woven Contemporary Tale

by John Allison

For his second act, Pittsburgh novelist Jacob Bacharach has turned in another work of enormously entertaining literary fiction set in Pittsburgh. It’s less cosmic than his debut, the 2014 sci-fi sendup “A Bend in the World,” but equally peppered with highbrow cultural references, trenchant social observations and turns of phrase that spin you right up …

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