Blessed Doors, Opened: a Theater Life in Pittsburgh

 HowlRound: My first initiation into Pittsburgh wasn’t the famed Steelers (pronounced “Stillers,” if you’re from the ‘Burgh), six-inch high sandwiches layered with fries (they put fries on everything here), or the bridges that take my breath away. During my first visit to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2007, a friend, who would become my mother-in-law two years later, invited me to attend a play with her. That was the first seed. At the end of summer, I moved to Pittsburgh and learned this city’s might was not merely in its star athletes, stellar history, or its legacy in steel. It was, rather, the heart of downtown, in the Cultural District, where theater companies, actors, and playwrights make art, where the August Wilson Center for African American Culture gave me my first shot as a professional literary artist.