2020 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival Programming Line-up Announced
A co-presentation of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival celebrates its fifth year
March 20-22, 2020 | Pittsburgh’s Cultural District
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University are excited to announce the complete programming lineup for the fifth Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, taking place March 20-22, 2020 at locations throughout the Cultural District. The Festival brings together internationally-renowned academics, artists, and intellectual innovators offering interviews, intimate conversations, and select performances focused on art, literature, music, science, policy, politics, and more—all in a lively, entertaining, accessible format in the Cultural District. It’s smart talk about stuff that matters.
This year's Pittsburgh Humanities Festival consists of Featured Events, featured performances and presentations in Cultural District Theaters, Core Conversations, intimate interviews, presentations, and conversations featuring internationally renowned academics, artists, and intellectual innovators, and a Public Open Call, which provides a chance for new voices to be heard at the Festival through web-based auditions open to anyone interested in presenting or performing.
2020 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival Featured Events kick off with the return of Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®. Previously seen in Pittsburgh with interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, the group takes on the world of tragedy with Macbeth on March 20th at the Byham Theater. The next night of the Festival, March 21st, features beloved This American Life host and creator Ira Glass with his show Seven Things I’ve Learned at the Byham Theater. Glass mixes audio clips, music, and video to deliver a unique talk, sharing lessons from his life and career in storytelling. Blair Imani is the final featured event of the Festival, giving her Making Our Way Home talk on Sunday, March 22nd at the Greer Cabaret Theater.
Core Conversations at this year’s Pittsburgh Humanities Festival run the gamut – from Kennywood Behind the Screams, a discussion with Rick Sebak and Brian Butko about Kennywood’s history, to Predicting Elections: Trump’s Chances of Winning in 2020, during which University of Pittsburgh’s Jonathan Woon provides data and statistical analysis of Donald Trump’s chances of winning re-election. From Brewing Black Beer, a conversation with Fresh Fest Founders and Black Frog Brewing, to Becoming a Queen, where Pittsburgh Drag Queen Kierra Darshell discusses her journey as a drag performer and her efforts to make drag mainstream in Pittsburgh, the 2020 Festival’s Core Conversations fill Saturday, March 21st and Sunday, March 22nd with ‘smart talk’ in the Trust Arts Education Center at 805-807 Liberty Avenue.
The Public Open Call provides the general public with a chance to be heard at the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival and to engage in dialogue about the humanities. One presentation is selected by a jury panel to appear in the lineup of Core Conversations. The final selection is made based upon factors including, but not limited to, the auditioning person’s stage presence and merit in commanding a theater audience, ability to articulate a story or discussion points in a cohesive, compelling way, and topic suitability amid the Festival’s diverse overall programming. The open call is available for any individual or collective of three or fewer individuals, and is open until Friday, January 31, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Information on the Open Call can be found at TrustArts.org/SmartTalk.
Tickets are now on sale for all Core Conversations and Featured Events. Tickets for Core Conversations can be purchased for $5 per Conversation. Ticket prices for Featured Events vary. For pricing and to purchase tickets, visit TrustArts.org/SmartTalk , the Box Office at Theater Square, or call (412) 456-6666.
2020 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival Featured Events
Sh!tfaced Shakespeare
Friday, March 20, 2020 | 8 p.m. | Byham Theater
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare® is back! Your favorite boozy Bard family is coming round to Pittsburgh again and plunging into the hearty world of tragedy with their hit show, Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®: Macbeth. Upon hearing the weird sister's prediction, Macbeth and his tiger wife take matters into their own hands and manage to burn down everything in their wake. Well, almost. Fair is foul and foul is fair in this tale of prophecy gone slightly off the rails. Perhaps we should add a bit of liquor to help the process along.
Featuring Shakespeare's most lovable witches, ghostly best friends, hellhounds, unhinged wives, enough dead kings to give Game of Thrones a run for its money, and lots of plaid, Scotland storms Pittsburgh next spring. Settle in for a pint (or two!) and raise a glass with us. Sh!t-faced Shakespeare® is the classic combination of a Tetris-ed together Shakespeare script, a six-pack of professional actors, and a luge flow of booze! What could possibly go right?
Warning: Shit-faced Shakespeare® is perfect for those wishing to add to their repertoire of colorful language and not for those who blush easily at the mere mention of the “F” word…
Ira Glass: Seven Things I’ve Learned
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 8 p.m. | Byham Theater
“Mr. Glass is a journalist but also a storyteller who filters his interviews and impressions through a distinctive literary imagination, an eccentric intelligence, and a sympathetic heart.”
—The New York Times
Ira Glass, the beloved host and creator of iconic public radio program This American Life, invites us into his creative process, mixing audio clips, music, and video to tell captivating stories live onstage, and sharing lessons and insights gathered over his career. This American Life is heard each week by over 2.2 million listeners on more than 500 public radio stations, with another 2.5 million downloading each podcast.
Under Glass’s editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including six Peabody awards. In 1999, the American Journalism Review declared that This American Life was “in the vanguard of a journalistic revolution” and, since then, a generation of podcasts and radio shows have sprung up — Radiolab, Invisibilia, StartUp, Reply All, Love + Radio, Heavyweight — building upon the style of narrative journalism championed by Glass and his staff.
Blair Imani
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 7:30 p.m. | Greer Cabaret Theater
Over the course of six decades, an unprecedented wave of Black Americans left the South and spread across the nation in search of a better life – a migration that sparked stunning demographic and cultural changes in twentieth-century America. Through gripping and accessible historical narrative paired with illustrations, author and activist Blair Imani examines the largely overlooked impact of The Great Migration and how it affected, and continues to affect, Black identity and America as a whole.
In her talk Making Our Way Home, Ms. Imani explores issues like voting rights, domestic terrorism, discrimination, and segregation alongside the flourishing of arts and culture, activism, and civil rights. Blair Imani shows how these influences shaped America's workforce and wealth distribution by featuring the stories of notable people and events, relevant data, and family histories. The experiences of prominent figures such as James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), Ella Baker, and others are woven into the larger historical and cultural narratives of The Great Migration to create a truly singular record of this powerful journey.
Blair Imani is a critically-acclaimed historian, outspoken advocate and activist, and dynamic public speaker. The author of two historical books, Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History (2018) and Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and The Black American Dream (2020), she centers on women and girls, global Black communities, and the LGBTQ communities.
Hailing from Los Angeles, CA, Blair Imani attended Louisiana State University where, in 2014, she founded Equality for HER, a non-profit organization that provided resources and a forum for women and nonbinary people to feel empowered. Her leadership took her to the front lines of anti-police brutality protests and, following her arrest at the protests of Alton Sterling’s murder in Baton Rouge, Blair began building a platform and social media presence to organize and create awareness about injustices in Black, Queer, and Muslim communities.
A highly sought-after public speaker and brand ambassador, Blair Imani has appeared on Fox News and MSNBC, presented at colleges and universities, spoken at progressive conferences around the world, and delivered powerful talks and speeches for organizations that include GLAAD and LoveLoud. Her viral TEDxBoulder talk “Queer & Muslim: Nothing to Reconcile” has sparked important discourse about the intersection of the two identities. And in 2019, she was proudly featured in New York City Pride’s campaign honoring the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
2020 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival Core Conversations
Full listing and descriptions of each Conversation available at TrustArts.org/SmartTalk.
Kennywood Behind the Screams: Rick Sebak and Brian Butko
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 12-1 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Janis Joplin: her LIfe and Music with Holly George-Warren
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Becoming a Queen with Kierra Darshell
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Dance Maker: Blackness in White Spaces with Staycee Pearl
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 3-4 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Drinking with Shakespeare
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 3-4 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 4:30-5:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Public Open Call Winner
Saturday, March 21, 2020 | 4:30-5:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Predicting Elections: Trump’s Chances of Winning in 2020 with Jonathan Woon
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 12-1 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Brewing Black Beer: A Conversation with Fresh Fest Founders and Black Frog Brewing
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Everyone Wants to Get to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die with Jonathan D. Moreno
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Life Sentences: The Amazing Journey of Walking Out of an American Prison with Robert "Faruq" Wideman
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 3-4 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
Cookie Activism: Using Sugar as a Platform for Social Justice with Jasmine Cho
Sunday, March 22, 2020 | 3-4 p.m. | Trust Arts Education Center
- Live performance / discussion opportunity at the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, March 20-22, 2020
- $200 honorarium per individual or collective
- Complimentary tickets to experience the entire three-day Festival
- Media promotion associated with event marketing and public relations efforts
- Review eligibility requirements above
- Submit in 250 words or less a synopsis of your proposed presentation (a story, viewpoint, etc.) in a way that conveys to the jury panel what it might be like for you to appear on stage at the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival in front of a live audience.
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The Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, a production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Humanities Center of Carnegie Mellon University, first launched in 2015, is a gathering of internationally-renowned academics, artists, and intellectual innovators in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. The fourth Festival, March 20-22, 2020, will offer intimate conversations, interviews, and performances focused on art, literature, music, science, policy, politics, and more—all helping us to explore what it means to be human. It’s smart talk about stuff that matters. Tag your social media posts with #PGHsmarttalk. TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
Founded in 2003, the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University promotes and supports scholarship and research that actively engages with culture and human production across the disciplines. Both a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and engagement with the traditional questions addressed by the humanities are essential at a university historically focused on science, technology, and the arts. Through lectures, panel discussions, conferences, and public outreach in the Faces Film Festivals and Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, we demonstrate the value and interest of the humanities on and off campus. Over the past decade, Carnegie Mellon has strengthened its standing in the humanities. Its Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences has distinguished faculty and talented students in the departments of English, History, Modern Languages and Philosophy who are focused on teaching and learning deep intellectual knowledge as well as developing useful, practical skills. cmu.edu/dietrich/humanities-center
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh’s most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners. Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District. The District is one of the country’s largest land masses “curated” by a single nonprofit arts organization. A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity. Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh’s quality of life. Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts. TrustArts.org | @CulturalTrust on Facebook · Instagram · Twitter