onStage Pittsburgh – Director Kyle Haden on Quantum Theatre Production, New Role at Pittsburgh Public, and CMU ColLABo.
The Downtown parkway ramp spills onto Grant Street with a skyward view of One Oxford Centre, the aluminum, glass and granite skyscraper that has gleamed in the sun since 1983, the same year that the headquarters of the infamous Enron corporation opened in Houston, Texas.
The expansive lobby here at home has both a retro and futuristic feel, a sort of The Jetsons meets the Pittsburgh Renaissance, and it’s where Kyle Haden, director of the play that tells the tale of an American company’s meteoric rise and catastrophic fall, meets to talk about his latest directorial gig for Quantum Theatre.
Enron, the dark comedy by British writer Lucy Prebble, revisits the seismic scandal that rocked the corporate and financial worlds in 2001. The co-presentation with Attack Theatre opens on October 30, 2025, on the sixth floor of One Oxford.
The play premiered in 2009, and resulted in Prebble becoming an Emmy winner, as she was asked to join the HBO Max hit Succession as a writer and executive producer. Her work on both focuses on the consequences of corporate power and greed run amok.
The villains of the real-life story include Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling, played by Joe McGranaghan, Kenneth Lay (Ken Bolden), and CFO Andrew Fastow (John Michnya). Lay and Skilling were convicted of covering up billions of dollars in debt from failed deals and projects, before Enron filed for bankruptcy. Lay died before being sentenced; Skilling served 12 years of his 24-year prison term after numerous appeals; and Fastow served 5 years of a 6-year stretch. The scandal also brought down Arthur Andersen LLC, at the time one of the largest accounting firms in the world.
A real Enron commercial once claimed: “We are the company that makes the market work.”
Haden grew up during what he recalls as “the heyday of Enron,” and recalls watching as the Enron execs were led away in handcuffs from the company’s Houston offices.
“I don’t know if they came to [his alma mater] Wake Forest to recruit, but I definitely remember their commercials, seeing Jeffrey Skilling on the cover of Time, and [the message was], ‘This is the future of business; this is the type of company that people want to go work for; that people at schools like mine go to work for.’ And it just felt like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what the 21st century is going to be like.’ ”
That feeling informs “a sense of possibility in the future” he hopes to evoke when audiences enter the world of Enron, knowing what we now know..
The design of the play in London and on Broadway was high/low tech and representational, employing boxes, projections and tubes of light (think lightsabers).
The design and movement of the play, with a cast of 14, was still evolving as Haden spoke.
“My training as an actor was at Columbia,” said Haden, who wears multiple hats in the theater and academic worlds. “I was very physical with my professors there, so I do have that background, but I also knew I would need some help and guidance.”
He put the request in to Quantum founder and artistic director Karla Boos, who asked, “Hey, I don’t know if you know Peter and Michele at Attack Theatre; they’re in Lawrenceville … ”
Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza’s company is located not from where Haden lives.
“And so Karla very quickly brokered that conversation between us, and the three of us sat down, and it was immediate, the synergy between us and talking about how we worked and the things we were interested in. That chemistry hit it off right away,” Haden said.
The Enron cast includes Attack company dancers Isabella Bergamin, Anya Epstein, Jax RF McAtee and Will VanSlander. Christine Weber as Claudia Roe is the lone female lead, with an ensemble that features Amy Landis, Isaac Miller, Jose Perez IV, Jamie Agnello, Parag Gohel, and Tru Verret-Flemming.
Weber made her Quantum Theatre debut in 2023, in the Haden-directed The Devil is a Lie, which connects .. to the current project.
One Oxford Centre’s silvery sleekness stands as a counterpoint to venerable neighbors that include The Frick Building, which was Pittsburgh’s tallest structure when it opened in 1902, and where Quantum staged The Devil Is a Lie, an interactive play that featured “an evil tech billionaire” trying to win over investors.
The very busy Haden counts among his leadership roles the title of artistic producer of Carnegie Mellon University’s ColLABo, a production development incubator. He was recently named to a new position – artistic consultant – at Pittsburgh Public Theater, where he got a taste of working with an unusually large cast, as associate director of the Public Works production of Twelfth Night, at the O’Reilly Theater.
He said the process of directing a large cast was in the ballpark with being a company CEO.
“Coming off of Twelfth Night … which had 60 people, a creative team of nine, just as the main folks, and watching how [director] Marya Sea Kaminski handled that ,was really great training for this, knowing when you roll up your sleeves and get involved, when you take a step back and watch things, and not being afraid to delegate things.”
His roles with CMU and the Public are often all in a day’s work.
For the Public, “I’m basically working as a consultant, but I’ve been on the board, and so I’ve been involved with them for several years,” he said. “So really I have three main functions: One is sort of overseeing the season, the function of an artistic director. So, interfacing with the artists and having those sort of conversations, making sure everything’s staying on track and living up to everything the Public would hope, with their mission and their values, and helping to figure out what the next season is going to be, in conversations with Brian Pope [Casting & Literary Director], and with the rest of the staff. And then with [Managing Director] Shaunda McGill and the rest of the folks, figuring out, sort of, what’s next.” He said there was currently no search for an artistic director; the company has been without one since Kaminski left at the end of July of this year.
While the CMU Center for New Work Development is based Downtown, ColLABo remains on the Oakland campus, taking advantage of the resources provided at the School of Drama.
“It’s really exciting because one of the teams we just had here earlier this year is actually premiering their show [Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange] out in Sonoma. So we’ll open [Enron] on the 30th, and the next weekend I’ll go out to San Francisco and see their show. It’s cool that now we’re starting to see some fruit born from those shows they’re developing.”
On the Friday before the Enron opening, Haden was still developing his vision for the play’s local premiere. The director said he had been crystal clear with the cast about how often he was likely to try something, throw it out, and begin again.
“I’m a person that’s just very comfortable as an artist, continuing to fidget and play with things up until the last minute. There’s always some great idea that you have very late in the process. And if it’s healthy and humane to implement it, we want to try to do that, because sometimes, that’s when those great ideas strike that really make the story clear for the audience.”
It was approaching rush hour as he spoke, and executives and workers made their way through the lobby, onto the escalators and the lobby’s glass elevators, in an area of the building set to undergo renovations, including an upscale central bar with live music after hours.
For Enron, the Quantum creative team has an entire floor to work its magic.
“We’re not there yet,” Haden said finally, “but we’re close.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Quantum Theatre’s 35th anniversary season continues with Enron, presented with Attack Theatre, on the sixth floor of One Oxford Centre, 301 Grant Street, Downtown, October 30 – November 23, 2025. Free parking is available in One Oxford Centre’s adjoining garage (GPS address: 339 Cherry Way, Pittsburgh, PA 15219), and Quantum patrons may enjoy a pre-show dinner via a special prix fixe menu at the Rivers Club on select nights (advance reservations required). Tickets and more details: https://www.quantumtheatre.com/enron/.
