Articles Archive - Pittsburgh Quarterly

That Kinetic Theatre Company’s “Embers” is such a moving play should be counterintuitive: it violates one of the most basic rules of art, “show don’t tell.” This is a work that shows nothing and tells everything, which is doubly ironic, as its principal character, who does most of the telling, does not trust language. Based …

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History

Pittsburgh’s Contributions to the World, Pt. VII

by PQ Staff

To celebrate the beginning of our 20th year, we’ve set out to catalogue the contributions that Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania have made to the world. The list has grown and grown, and despite our best efforts, we know we’ll leave out key contributors. I think you’ll find that this small city at the confluence of …

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History

Pittsburgh’s Contributions to the World, Pt. VI

by PQ Staff

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Opinion

More Than Meets the Eye

by Samuel Hazo

It’s frequently assumed that looking and seeing have the same meaning. In fact, the difference between them is crucial. To look means essentially to perceive in three dimensions and to confirm and name what confronts our vision. Its ultimate benefit is to permit us to identify by name the world around us. It focuses on …

My PTSD (“Post Traumatic Suit Disorder”)

by Mark Schwartz

Reading Clayton Touter’s recent story in Pittsburgh Quarterly — “Buying A Suit. A Primer” — took me back to being traumatized by Brooks Brothers at 13 in the mid-sixties… Per his quote of Michael Bastian of Brooks Brothers which invented the “off the rack” suit: “If you don’t know your proper size, the first thing …

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PQ Poem

The First Years

by Sara Henning

The First Years Locals call it the gates of hell, craterin the Turkmenistan desert burning forty years. The longest-burning fire begansix thousand years ago—an Australian coal seam in New South Wales ignited by lightning,smiting the biome into barren trails. But I always come back to the coal seamblazing under Centralia, Pennsylvania, where a trash fire …

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Arts

Briefly Noted

by Stuart Sheppard

I was fortunate to attend another remarkable boundary-blurring performance recently: the world premiere of the long-lost “Markus Passion” by Bach. A joint-effort by Chatham Baroque, Renaissance Baroque, The Sebastians, and Joseph Marcell — based on archival interpretations and recreations of a vanished manuscript from the Bach corpus — the performance of this fusion of libretto, …

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History

Pittsburgh’s Contributions to the World, Pt. V

by PQ Staff

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Arts

Pittsburgh Opera and Chatham Baroque Blur Performative Boundaries

by Stuart Sheppard

These are certainly synergistic days in the arts. Theater companies are staging operas, operas are staging plays, dancers are speaking in ballets, and everyone is projecting video. Museums are mixing it up, too, but then, they always have. It’s certainly been a win for audiences – at least in Pittsburgh – where we have so …

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Home & Lifestyle Travel

The Amazing (and Unforgettable) Bayernhof

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Tucked away on a cul-de-sac in residential O’Hara Township is a museum you’ve likely never visited. The Bayernhof Museum is the culmination of the vision of Charles “Charlie” Boyd Brown, III (1934-1999), a quirky eccentric who left a legacy for generations to enjoy. Brown obtained his wealth by founding and running Gas-Lite Manufacturing, which made …

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History

Pittsburgh’s Contributions to the World, Pt. IV

by PQ Staff

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Books

Flick’s Rough and Tough Feminism Fits Pittsburgh

by Fred Shaw

Though the dictionary definition of feminism — “the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes,” — remains elusive, Sherrie Flick, author of the autobiographical essay collection Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist, offers a more regional take in her essay “Instincts.” “Yet Western Pennsylvania is where my own particular feminism took root, …

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Arts

PICT’s “Miss Julie:” A Triangle with Four Sides

by Stuart Sheppard

Modern adaptations of classic plays often look like someone wearing borrowed clothes: they don’t fit quite right, and it’s obvious that the person wearing them had to struggle to put them on. But when an adaptation of a play like August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” (1888) really does justice to its antecedent and fits the subject …

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History

Pittsburgh’s Contributions to the World, Pt. III

by PQ Staff

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Books

Welcome to Wildcat

by Fred Shaw

When asked in an interview with writer Deborah Kalb about the significance of the title to his recent novel, Wildcat: An Appalachian Romance, Jeffrey Dunn points to the village of Braeburn, Pennsylvania, where “there is a road called ‘Wildcat Hollow Road.’ It’s a good Appalachian name: free but threatened, just like the wildcats whose coughs, …

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Nature

Wild Apples

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

A summer apple tree in the front yard is a wondrous thing. I can sit on the front porch and watch apples fall to the ground, listen to the “plunk” as they hit the grass, and wildlife come right to me. A squirrel climbs the tree, plucks an apple from a branch and runs away …

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Books Sports

Myron Cope: The Man Behind the Terrible Towel

by Fred Shaw

For a Steelers fan, watching 60 minutes of football at Acrisure Stadium without a sea of Terrible Towels is hard to imagine. In the mythology surrounding Pittsburgh’s most popular sports franchise, a playoff game against the Baltimore Colts at Three Rivers Stadium on December 27, 1975, marked the first appearance of the “gimmick” that would …

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History

Then designer Betsy Deiseroth walked into her Fox Chapel home 24 years ago, she faced a daunting challenge. Though situated on a quiet road surrounded by a leafy lot, the house itself cried out for renovation. An 1870s cottage married to a 1950s ranch, it was charmless at best. “I walked in, saw the living room …

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Opinion

Seeking a Safe, Welcoming and Thriving Region

by Paul O'Neill Jr. & Geoff Webster

It was a snowy day in Pittsburgh in 2024 when a City truck slid into a guardrail. No one was hurt, but it caused risk and damaged the vehicle. Asking “why” yielded a typical answer, “duh, it was icy.” But Mayor Ed Gainey had promised to be serious about a safe, welcoming and thriving city. Part of …

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Arts

Total War Over Cocktails

by Stuart Sheppard

If there’s a miracle in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s current performance of the 1962 Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — it’s that two well-educated couples can argue drunkenly for over three hours and never once broach the subject of politics. (And these couples are of different generations, no less). Of course, this would …

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