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English Professor's Latest Play Selected for Pittsburgh New Works Festival

Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2011

Off-Color Remarks, a one-act play written by Dr. Andrew Ade, Westminster associate professor of English, was selected for the 2011 Pittsburgh New Works Festival.  The play completed a five-show run Sept. 15-18 at the Baverso Theater in the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks.

Ade's play was one of 12 new scripts chosen from a field of 111 national submissions for inclusion in the festival.

Off-Color Remarks depicts an encounter between a retired widower and a streetwise teenage boy, 50 years apart in age, who are forced by circumstances to spend time in a room in an art gallery while security personnel determine whether the young man stole an art book from their gift shop.  In the course of their 40-minute confrontation, the two discover they share similar male problems of understanding women, painting, and the injustices of life.

At the close of the festival, Ade was announced as one of three finalists for Outstanding Playwright Award.  That honor went to Westminster graduate F.J. Hartland '80 for his play Funeral in the Rain.

One of the actors in Ade's play earned the Best Supporting Actor Award, while the lead actor was nominated in the Best Actor category.

"This was my first time participating in the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, and it was a very rewarding experience," Ade said.  "I was incredibly pleased with the director's sensitive staging and with the actors' intensity and talent.  It was wonderfully gratifying to see the dozens of Westminster students and colleagues who came down to support the show during its run."

"Most exciting for me was to learn that one of the other produced playwrights was my former Westminster playwriting student Sara Baines-Miller, who had a remarkable stage debut with Red Brick Road," Ade added.

Ade's previous one-act plays, Language Barrier (2010) and A Question of Taste (2007), earned Best Play honors in the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company's Theatre Festival in Black and White, making him that festival's only two-time winner.

Ade, who has been with Westminster since 2003, earned an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Contact Ade at (724) 946-7349 or email for additional information.

Dr. Andrew Ade