With the arrival of the pandemic last March and live theater across the country shut down, Quantum Theatre found itself asking the same question as every other business reliant on bringing people together in person, “What now?”
Now 30 years old, the company has built a national reputation for its experimental theater making. Producing eclectic works that run the gamut from world premieres of contemporary plays to baroque operas, one aspect unifies each project — they are produced “environmentally” in non-theater locations throughout the city. Founder and Artistic Director Karla Boos chooses these venues with care, seeking a home for each show that that serves as a canvas for its team of designers and which heightens the audience’s experience of the play. Nearly every neighborhood in Pittsburgh has hosted a production at this point in the company’s history, but a few favorites include the Braddock Carnegie Library’s abandoned swimming pool for Thérèse Raquin, a grove of crabapple trees at the Frick Museum for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a cabin built on a dock at Aspinwall Riverfront Park for The River, and the Carrie Blast Furnaces for a recent production of King Lear.
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