Featuring 30 international companies and artists from 20 countries, including representation from Pittsburgh’s own arts community, the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts (a production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust) is electrifying downtown with never-before-seen theater, dance, music, visual arts and immersive experiences!
The last Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts was in 2013 (following Festivals in 2008 and 2004), and since then the Trust has doubled the Festival’s length and tripled its attractions, presenting more than 500 opportunities for everyone – locals and visitors alike – to experience groundbreaking international works in Pittsburgh… reinforcing our reputation as a premier global destination for arts, entertainment, and culture.
Among the Festival’s many must-see offerings this year are a number of very literary — and literature-inspired — performances and premieres: an acrobatic interpretation of the quintessential Georges Perec essay, “Species of Space”; a genre-bending look at The White Album by Joan Didion (more on that below); a pulp-fiction secret agent star of more than 300 books (published in Israel from the 1960s through the 80s) brought to life with Foley sound effects… and more!
We recommend spending some time clicking through the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts’ full event listings, but we’ve also highlighted some of their more literary offerings right here on Littsburgh for your convenience!
This post is brought to you in partnership with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
⭐️ Littsburgh Pick: Joan Didion looms large in our literary lives. Every time we hear her name, we can’t help but remember reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem in the summer before our first year of high school, imagining the dry Santa Ana winds and the tartness of fresh olives from bedrooms that could not have been further away from Didion’s sun-drenched Sacramento. We didn’t read the The White Album until we were a little older, probably because The White Album is a more overtly political book that grapples with the cultural upheaval in California during the 60s and 70s. The titular essay — which opens with the line “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” — is possibly Didion’s best known piece of writing… and we’re so curious to see what it looks like in the context of a fully immersive theatrical performance!
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Here’s one: It’s 1968, and you arrive at a house party. A band is playing, some people are making out. You drink, you mingle, you dance. The White Album is theater meeting performance art unlike anything Pittsburgh has ever seen. This innovative production brings Joan Didion’s seminal essay to life—performed in its entirety by Obie Award-winning actor Mia Barron—with a glassed-in ‘stage within a stage’ and surprises behind every onstage door. Become a voyeur as you sit in the August Wilson Center auditorium, and watch as social norms and theatrical conventions crumble to the ground.
The White Album episodically traverses the tectonically shifting landscape of the late 1960s in California. Our current era carries eerie shades of the late 60s: the Black Panthers in Black Lives Matter; the Vietnam student protestors and the #NeverAgain movement; Women’s Lib has given way to #MeToo. The struggles continue, amplified through social media feeds, broadcast openly and unfiltered. But there is hope. Our narrative can change, grow, and mature as we find fresh resonance in the stories we tell ourselves again and again.
The White Album is a project by Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera, co-commissioned by Center Theatre Group and BAM.
Don’t miss out:
The world premiere of The White Album runs from Friday, Oct 5th – Sunday, Oct 7th at the August Wilson Center!
A note from the Festival Programming Team:
We’ve been fans of Lars Jan’s interdisciplinary work for almost 10 years. Walking the line between visual art and performance art, we always knew that Lars would be a natural theater maker. His newest piece, The White Album is a multimedia performance that uses Joan Didion’s seminal essay to apply a uniquely inventive approach to the intersection between observation, storytelling, audience participation, choreography and architecture.
All of us at the Cultural Trust are thrilled to be presenting this World Premier that travels to New York after Pittsburgh as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival. The piece will then have its West Coast Premier at the prestigious Center Theater Group in LA.
We are also thrilled to be partnering with Janis Burley Wilson and her amazing staff at the African American Cultural Center to host community conversations before, during, and after this piece to explore the topical issues raised in the piece.
Run Time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Accessibility: Wheelchair Seating, Assistive Listening
Note: All services may not be available at all performances. Click the link above for accessible performance schedule or contact customer service for further assistance.
Recommended for ages 12+. For additional information, see the event listing on trustarts.org.
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