Category: Prose

Theatre Review: Voodoo Trilogy

By | Prose, Reviews: Performing Arts

If you’ve never been to the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, you may find yourself wondering whether you are going to see a show or are on your way to pay for parking. Sharing its site with a garage, the theatre is situated across from Six Penn in the heart of the Cultural District. A placard directs …

Theatre Review: The Archipelago: A Balkan Passage

By | Prose, Reviews: Performing Arts

It is said that great things come in small packages. If this is so, then Pittsburgh’s quaint Future Tenant’s art space offered a gift of gigantic proportions. With its walls adorned in maps from various European locations and the stage a mere wooden shelf and lounge chair, one would wonder what entertainment could be provided …

A Season in Hell VIII

By | Elizabeth Kirschner, Prose

Suddenly—how does this happen?—I’m out of the black body sack and oh my God, husband is driving nails into the back of my head. His face looks chalky, grey stubble on his cheeks and he is way taller than me. Has he had a growth spurt since I moved away? He’s got bulging muscles, like …

Book Review: Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes

By | Book Review, Prose

Diwata Barbara Jane Reyes BOA Editions Paperback, $16.00 ISBN 9781934414378 Published September, 2010 A Diwata, in Philippine culture, is a guardian spirit of nature similar to a nymph or elf who resides in large trees and is capable of delivering both fortune and misfortune. They are called upon ritually to bring a fruitful harvest, health, …

A Season in Hell VII

By | Elizabeth Kirschner, Prose

Twenty-four hours. It takes twenty-four hours for my diamond mind to reset itself. Or so says Doctor Susan and Doctor Susan knows best. I feel like some strange nocturnal animal being shocked by the light stalking through the windows. There’s water out there. There’s sky out there and a very bald sun. I’m trying to …

4th Period, Metropolitan High

By | Prose

4th period and I have my really bright kids, my honors class. I’m in Room 205, but, right at the beginning of the year, the very first form of the year put me down as Room 206. That’s Bob Spire’s room, a nice guy, special ed., went to Northwestern. I know where my classroom is, …

A Season in Hell VI

By | Elizabeth Kirschner, Prose

I am fathomless under the fathoms. My body parts—an arm here, a leg there—are going numb. It’s cold in here, but I’m not sure where here is. How could that be? How can I exist if I don’t know where here is? Give me back my house. Give me back my seasick mind. Enough dying …

Dance: 108 Minutes

By | Michael Simms, Prose, Reviews: Performing Arts

A dancer can seem very small in Pittsburgh’s Byham Theatre with its high proscenium arch, its sixty foot ceilings painted with giant muses floating in the clouds, its beautifully restored tile and plaster work, its marble stairs and brass ornaments. And the subtle movements of the human body expressing shades of feeling can seem inconsequential …