In the presence of The Frick Art Museum’s Shakespeare installation, ‘From Stage to Page: 400 years of Shakespeare in Print,’ Quantum Theatre hosted a night of cocktails and culture to preview the programming slated for its 32nd season. As it turns out, the exhibition was a hint, or “set the stage,” for what’s to come.
“Live theater is important for the community,” Karla Boos, Artistic Director, Quantum Theatre, boasted with a massive smile as she introduced the three 2023-24 performances: a Shakespearean classic, a 20th-century love story, and an exploration of sexual politics.
Kicking off the season’s show schedule is Hamlet, running from August 4 to 27 at the Carrie Blast Furnaces. It’s “another muscular edit of Shakespeare that celebrates the amazing historic site and leverages this fitting backdrop for one of the greatest plays of all time,” reads a press release announcing the programming.
Directed by Jeffrey Carpenter, who also headed King Lear, Treasure Treasure leads the cast as Hamlet. Also on stage are Robin Walsh, Sam Turich, Saige Smith, and other Pittsburgh theater notables. Together they are set to create an irresistible contemporary world filled with ghosts of hidden crimes.
Quantum’s 100th show returns to Rodef Shalom for a musical production of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk with Violins of Hope – nearly 100 instruments that survived the Holocaust.
“Like the Violins of Hope, Daniel Jamieson and Ian Ross’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk depicts triumphant survivors of that dark chapter of history,” states the press release. “The fantasy fairytale takes its name from the Lithuanian city in which Chagall was born in 1887 and from the relationship memorialized in countless of his paintings.”
With music direction by Douglas Levine, The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk features two triple threat actor/singer/dancers backed by a Klezmer band and is directed by Gustavo Zajac, a world expert on music from the Jewish diaspora as well as an accomplished Broadway director/choreographer.
Closing out the 32nd season is Scenes from an Execution, which director Andrew Smith (The Hard Problem, The Gun Show, Far Away) says will feel modern and relatable to present-day issues, despite its 16th-century Venice setting. Realist, rebel, and free spirit, painter Galactica — played by Lisa Veltan Smith (Far Away, Plano) — does not produce what is expected, and winds up caught between personal ambition and moral responsibility.
Season tickets are on sale now, with individual tickets available closer to each show.