Steel City Shakespeare Center finds new home through partnership with West View Hub

Whether it’s a rousing performance of “Richard III” from atop the city’s Fineview Overlook or a production of “Twelfth Night” for a tiny audience at the Pine-Richland Youth Center, members of the Steel City Shakespeare Center love to bring classical theater right to the people.

But sometimes you just need a place to call home.

The nonprofit organization led by artistic director Jeffrey Chips found that home through a partnership with the West View Hub community support center.

“In late 2019 we were approached by the Wounded Warrior Project about bringing families to our Christmas show,” Chips said. “We were thrilled to be able to do that for them, but we really didn’t have a venue for the performance.”

Chips said he had been looking into doing some volunteer work for a local organization and learned about Scott Pavlot’s effort developing the Hub community center in West View.

“They let us use the Hub for the show and Scott and I began discussing the idea of a partnership that could benefit the community,” he said.

The Hub, which features a library, food pantry, media center, social services and programming for children and adults fit right in with the theater troupe’s mission to use classical theater to help people from diverse backgrounds connect.

“Steel City Shakespeare Center is committed to engaging and inspiring communities through the performance of Shakespeare and other classical literature and folklore,” said Chips, who founded the theater group in 2014.

“We’re grateful to the HUB for providing us with a new permanent home and the exciting opportunity to continue to connect with people through intimate, fast-paced and interactive performances that bring great stories to life,” he said.

Pavlot said adding Steel City Shakespeare to the Hub fits perfectly with the community center’s goals.

“The whole concept for the Hub was to create a center with numerous spokes that support the wheel,” Pavlot said. “So it’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to add another spoke to that wheel that enriches the community.”

While the coronavirus pandemic has postponed live, in-person performances, the Shakespeare Center still found ways to put on shows and programs.

A virtual performance of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” was held in April to raise money for the Hub’s pantry and an online presentation of “The Raven and Other Works” by Edgar Allen Poe was part of the community center’s Halloween celebration.

In December they did a radio-style presentation of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens on YouTube. And they are in the midst of a month-long, online Shakespeare Club for children in kindergarten through 12th grade.

“People have been saying that we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to the pandemic,” Chips said. “But we’re going to continue to work with the Hub to put on shows and have programs so we can be the light within the tunnel.”

While nothing can replace the connection between actor and audience that can occur during an in-person performance, the theater company uses a style of performance called “extreme casting” that readily adapts to virtual presentations.

Extreme casting utilizes a small cast or even a single performer to convey the story of a much larger cast of characters. It also does not rely on large sets, elaborate costumes and other components of big theatrical presentations.

The stripped-down style is rooted in theatrical styles such as puppetry, stand-up comedy, pantomime, “poor” theater and some aspects of Elizabethan theater, he said.