Four productions left in the 2026 Black Box season and audiences are invited to a unique experience each time.

The CENTER invites the community to journey down the stairs and experience the remaining shows in their Black Box season. This intimate series of performances features new work, emerging playwrights, and stories that might not find their way onto a traditional stage. The four productions left in this season each offer a completely different take on how the space can be utilized and The CENTER is encouraging patrons to experience and support them all.

What Black Box audiences experience is often very little like what they might see upstairs. The CENTER's Main Stage primarily hosts fully staged musicals and plays. The Black Box serves another purpose: one or two person shows, staged readings, new musicals, comedy, or work that relies on the strength of the performer and the material rather than the spectacle of sets, costumes, or tech.

*Andy Paluselli’s “Real Men Wear Scarves in Pittsburgh”*

"The Black Box allows us to say yes to so many things that the Main Stage isn't always set up for," says Olivia Michaels Bogert, Creative Director of The CENTER. Michaels Bogert curates the Black Box season lineup each year. "It allows The CENTER to continue to be a home for new artists, new work, or just more intimate pieces that don't feel the pressure of selling out a Main Stage house."

Already presented this year, the Black Box space has seen a one-man show, a concert musical adaptation of a classic, a staged reading of a Shakespeare play, and the very first fully-staged musical in the space: Tick, Tick, Boom!

WHAT'S NEXT:

Trenzas – August 7-9

The first in the next stretch of Black Box shows is Trenzas, written by playwright Janelle Lawrence, which runs the weekend of August 7-9. This mature piece follows Alisha, an eighteen-year-old navigating her identity as a bisexual, Afro-Latinx, first-generation American. This play features an entirely Black and Latinx cast of performers, all new to The CENTER. The community is encouraged to turn out in force to show their support and experience something new.

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How Did I Get Here? : Two One-Act Plays – September 11-13

The next production in the Black Box is a presentation of two one-act plays, each featuring two actors caught in impossible situations. The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter and Nine by Jane Shepard work together to expose how quickly lives collapse under pressure. Veteran CENTER artist Lisa Lynds directs both plays and asks the question: "What choice do we have when life hands us one raw deal after another through no fault of our own?"

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Reckoning: A Series of One-Person Shows – October 2-4

Ryan Skinner's Reckoning is a weekend of three very different performances.

Friday's My Story features Alina Gonzalez, a local Hudson Valley actress, and her tales of the last six years after experiencing a life-altering brain aneurysm. On Saturday, U.S. Man uses dark comedy and humor to explore what it means to face instability and anxiety in the modern world. Closing the weekend on Sunday is The Valley of the Cherries, a sometimes humorous look, with a touch of magical realism, at addiction, loss, and the complicated choices people make when up against systems that refuse to change.

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Is the Food Good? – November 27-29

Just in time for Thanksgiving and everyone's food-centered holiday, Heather Dell'Amore returns to the Black Box after a triumphant performance of "A Mother Stands Still." Dell'Amore brings another collection of stories, this time focusing on identity, aerobics, fad diets, and incensed chefs. This one-woman show focuses on healing relationships with food, breaking habits of disordered eating, and finally feeding her soul.

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The CENTER's Black Box is a way to give back to the community and provide opportunities for otherwise small, intimate, new, or untested material to find a space to live and breathe. Please see these shows and support these new, local playwrights, directors, performers, and artists.