{"id":297861,"date":"2026-10-01T20:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/297861\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T20:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:16:09","slug":"pittsburghs-confluence-theater-announces-inaugural-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/297861\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh’s Confluence Theater announces inaugural season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pittsburgh Public Theater and the Pittsburgh CLO are no more, but developments at Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh<\/a>, which resulted from their merger, continued apace this week as the group announced most of its 2027 season.<\/p>\n

After this fall\u2019s \u201cprologue season\u201d and some legacy holiday shows, the group will launch its official inaugural season. It includes three classic musicals, a recent Pulitzer Prize-winning drama and more.<\/p>\n

‘A great dinner party’<\/p>\n

As previously announced, Confluence programming will run year-round, with no real seasonal breaks like those traditionally taken by its predecessors. And the choices, announced Wednesday, reflect the blend of the two iconic troupe\u2019s legacies that organizers promised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe programmed this season like a great dinner party, bringing together guests who might not normally share a table,\u201d said interim artistic director Kyle Haden in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"Byham<\/p>\n

The Byham Theater will host Confluence’s production of “Les Mis\u00e9rables” next June.<\/p>\n

The season will begin in February at the O\u2019Reilly Theater with \u201cShe Loves Me,\u201d the 1963 hit Broadway romantic comedy by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock (\u201cFiddler on the Roof\u201d) that inspired the film \u201cYou\u2019ve Got Mail.\u201d<\/p>\n

It continues at the O\u2019Reilly with the Pittsburgh premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019 \u201cPurpose,\u201d a drama about a prominent Black family and its secrets. That\u2019s followed by \u201cLes Mis\u00e9rables,\u201d at the Byham Theater, and Kander and Ebb\u2019s \u201cCabaret,\u201d at the O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

In August, the Greer Cabaret Theater will host Confluence\u2019s staging of \u201cMatt and Ben,\u201d Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers\u2019 satiric comedy about Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and the writing of \u201cGood Will Hunting\u201d in which both lead characters are played by women.<\/p>\n

And, as previously announced, Confluence will stage Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Comedy of Errors,\u201d a farce about two sets of twins, starting in September at the O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

A seventh show is yet to be announced, Confluence said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Laura Greenawalt, Confluence\u2019s transition project manager, said many of the picks were based on feedback from subscribers dating back a few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the CLO audience really well, we know the Pittsburgh Public Theater audience really well, and so we looked for things where we felt like there was a good opportunity for overlap, where both could find some riches in the shows we chose,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Tickets are already on offer to subscribers and will be available to the general public later this month, Greenawalt said.<\/p>\n

Other developments<\/p>\n

Greenawalt also confirmed that Confluence had hired back all employees of the Public and CLO who had expressed a desire to return, including the 11 Public staffers who were laid off in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe approached everybody who was currently employed by Pittsburgh CLO and everyone who was impacted by the layoffs at the Public Theater earlier this year,\u201d said Greenawalt. \u201cAnd anyone who said they wanted to come along found a place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confluence now has 39 employees, 18 of whom are seasonal full-time production workers on union contracts previously employed by the Public. The staff also includes workers in marketing and development, education and community engagement and administration, she said.<\/p>\n

The director of production is Monica Bowen, longtime director of production and operations at the Public.<\/p>\n

Nine positions remain to be filled, according to Greenawalt including the top spots of executive producer and artistic director, now being filled on an interim basis by, respectively, Brett Ashley Crawford and Haden.<\/p>\n

Greenawalt said Confluence has a budget of $12.8 million for fiscal year 2026-27. That figure includes productions in the previously announced prologue season, highlighted by the Pittsburgh premiere of Jacob Ming-Trent\u2019s acclaimed solo show \u201cHow Shakespeare Saved My Life,\u201d<\/a> which opens in November at the O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

The budget is roughly equivalent to the combined total of the final-year budgets of the Public and the CLO.<\/p>\n

Also as announced this week by the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the budget will include a RAD Connections Grant of about $241,000. Connections Grants are meant to encourage resource sharing by groups funded by RAD. Greenawalt said the funds would be used to cover \u201ccosts associated with the transition\u201d as well as \u201cmarketing and communication strategy for this fall to spread the word about the merger happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confluence had also requested $400,000 in operating funds from the taxpayer-funded RAD. RAD\u2019s preliminary budget, also announced this week, allocated it $200,000. The total of that and the Connections Grant is $441,000, about $100,000 less than the Public and CLO had received in total for 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Public Theater and the Pittsburgh CLO are no more, but developments at Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-297861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}