Arts & Culture in Pittsburgh

Dedicated to celebrating the ghosts of musical theater past and present, the Pittsburgh CLO proudly remains a nonprofit cultural institution that lauds distinguished musical-theater folk while launching the careers of another generation of skilled performers.

Before he disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean on a research trip for the unfinished play Waterworld, William Shakespeare is rumored to have said to gatherers on the beach, "The past and future of theater is in time travel." See the Bard's sage wisdom come alive with today's Groupon. For $25, you get a scale-two ticket to the Pittsburgh Public Theater's production of Time of My Life at the O'Reilly Theater. Represented in green on Pittsburgh Public Theater's seating chart, scale-two tickets are available for your choice of show on April 15–18, a $45–$50 value depending on the day of the week. While Pittsburgh Public Theater offers $15 tickets for those age 26 and younger, they can only be purchased an hour before the show for Friday- and Saturday-night shows, or must be ordered in advance.

The Silk Screen Asian-American Film Festival, part of a larger vision for a future Asia Center of Pittsburgh, is an annual event highlighting the considerable cinematic output of filmmakers from India, Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Iran, as well as other nations you might one day inhabit according to childhood sessions of "Spin the Globe." This year's event—the sixth annual—features a slate of films to rival past years' entries. This year's flicks include such noteworthy efforts as Aftershock, The Light Thief, and Zero Bridge, among many others. Your pass gives you access to eight of the festival's films, giving you the chance to give a total of 24 thumbs up.

A nonprofit arts organization, Pittsburgh Musical Theater has energized the tapping of toes for more than two decades. The historic Byham Theater dates back to 1903, when the venue was originally erected as the Gayety Theater, and now fills its flashing marquee with Broadway shows, dance troupes, and films.

Guests take their seats inside the grandiose Carnegie Music Hall, a space lauded for providing superb acoustics for chamber music and a challenging venue for games of Marco Polo. The venue is tucked inside the same building as the dinosaur bones and European masterworks of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

The New Hazlett Theater, built in 1889 as the Carnegie Musical Hall, pays more of a resemblance to a cathedral than a concert space, from its austere stone walls to its soaring bell tower. In fact, the hall would serve as a religious retreat through the early 1900s. Saved from demolition in 1967 and renamed the Hazlett Theater in 1980, the venue would serve as the home of the Pittsburgh Public Theater for 24 seasons, followed by a brief stint as the summer home of a Pirates-obsessed vampire.