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Off Pitt Street Theatre in Bedford is in the process of expanding its operations to the Johnstown area.
“I happened to be in Johnstown last October,” Director Dawn Ziviello said. “I was in at a coffee shop called Classic Elements on Main Street and I struck up a conversation with a lovely lady named Michelle Adams not knowing that she was on the board of trustees of The State Theatre renovation project. We got to talking and a week later I met with the executive director of the project. We are moving toward becoming their resident theater company.”
Some of OPS upcoming events include the Seventh Annual Winners Showcase, which is where the group showcases the winners of the seventh annual OPS open playwriting competition. OPS produces in full the first- and second-place winners and they do a preview of the third-place winner.
“This year, we have ‘Jello is Forever,’ which is the first place winner by Cara Ringler. ‘Pure of Heart’ is our second place winner and is written by Robert Jeschonek and the third place winner is ‘Where is Brita Lansbury’ by Noah Hughes.”
Ziviello noted that the competition had an interesting outcome this year because OPS received entries from all over Pennsylvania and Western Maryland, but the winners were all from the Johnstown area.
This will be the first year that the Winners Showcase will be staged at two different venues. It opened at the Bedford Arts Cooperative in Bedford and closed last weekend in Johnstown.
“We have a really intense year as we start to split our time between the Bedford and Johnstown campuses. We are going to be all over the place,” Ziviello said.
Auditions for the children’s play “Alice in Wonderland” are coming up.
OPS will feature a special, one-night-only event in Johnstown on May 4. In honor of “may the fourth be with you,” the group will have a live radio show of Spaceballs at the State Theatre.
They have an entire season of programming for adults, young people and mixed casts.
“Probably the most anticipated mixed cast thing that we are doing is Puffs the play,” Ziviello said.
Ziviello added that Puffs, which will be performed around Labor Day, is a parody of the popular Harry Potter stories. It is told from the perspective of the much overlooked Hufflepuff house.
The mixed cast will be made up of adults as faculty members, elementary/middle school students in the first half of the show and high school students in the second half.
Ziviello is also looking forward to the second year of the writing club.
“We had someone from the community who asked if there was a writing group,” Ziviello said. “I said, ‘We can have one.’ So, we started one.”
The group is called Monday Muse Writers Guild. It meets the second Monday of every month. Ziviello will bring special guests such as authors, writers and people who can give advice and feedback.
“We have a small committed group of writers who are working on a lot of interesting projects,” Ziviello said.
Ziviello encourages people to come out and support OPS at both of their venues.
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