Place Settings

When she's not portraying Caroline on Something to Be Desired, Ann Turiano works in Pittsburgh's theatre and film community.

Yesterday, she suggested we attend a writing workshop conducted by Michele Lowe, a playwright whose most recent work, Mezzulah, 1946, will make its world premiere this month as part of the Pittsburgh City Theatre's New American Trio series of brand new works by American playwrights.

Considering I'm in the midst of writing and refurbishing STBD, this suggestion made sense.

You're Only Ever Where You Are

Lowe's workshop was about the power of "place" in a story -- specifically, how the WHERE of a story impacts the choices made by the characters within. Language, colors, textures -- all of these elements, which provide the backgrounds and settings that inform the characters' identities and create their backstories that directly affect their actions in the present -- it's all a product of the immediate environment.

That resonated with me because STBD is a story about Pittsburgh.

All along, we've never once denied that we're a Pittsburgh production. We've never pretended that the city depicted in the episodes is really New York or Chicago. We're proud to be from Pittsburgh, because we feel that sharing our view of the city with the outside world may help a larger audience come to appreciate what Pittsburgh has to offer. And, living here, we realize that this is a town with a serious identity crisis, so seeing itself dissected -- sometimes positively, sometimes constructively -- might help our fellow Pittsburghers feel proud of where they come from.

But how does being from Pittsburgh actually affect the CHARACTERS?

City as State (of Mind)

Would Caroline and Leo make the same choices they do now if they were from, say, Salt Lake City? Or Maine?

How do local institutions like the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins, Heinz and Primanti Bros., our triangular downtown, our numerous traffic tunnels and our struggle to move beyond a steel-based economy affect the characters' identities and psyches?

Where are the "yinzers" in our cast, the people who speak with that definitive Pittsburgh diction and use our regional dialect (like "slippy," "lurpy" and "redd up")?

As our recent audience survey showed, the bulk of our audience is (or once was) local, and the majority of that audience wants to see MORE Pittsburgh on the show. How can we interweave the city more organically into the story?

Can STBD become a love letter to Pittsburgh, much the same way as Sex & the City became a cultural touchstone for New Yorkers?

I believe so. All we have to do now is figure out HOW to best utilize the WHERE.