Westminster College English Professor's Christmas Play Staged in Pittsburgh
Posted on Tuesday, December 10, 2013
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. - Dr. Andrew Ade, Westminster College associate professor of English, has written a new one-act play that is being staged this month at the 2013 Theatre Festival in Black & White by the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company (PPTC). The play, which opened Dec. 5, will be shown until Dec. 17 at the PPTC space at 937 Liberty Ave. in Pittsburgh's Cultural District.
Ade's play, True Meaning, follows the story of opposite-sex adult twin siblings, who need to manage the twin sister's emotional crisis when the brother marries a woman who has nothing in common with the rest of the family. It takes place on Christmas Eve in the home where the twins grew up, and in the course of the play the three characters demonstrate three distinctly different ideas of "the true meaning of Christmas." The play is being directed by actress Rita Gregory.
"I love this festival because it is truly an all-Pittsburgh-theater-community enterprise," Ade said. "Black dramatists are given white directors, and white dramatists work with black directors. The shows themselves often have mixed casts, and the results are truly city-wide, multicultural collaborations."
To order tickets for one of the play's showings visit www.pghplaywrights.com/bwfest and click on Program A.
Ade's first play, A Question of Taste, premiered at the PPTC's 2007 festival, where it won four awards, including Best Play. It later won the 2009 Arts & Letters Prize in Drama and was published in the spring 2010 issue of Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture. It premiered in New York this past July in the Midtown International Theater Festival. Ade's one-act play, Language Barrier, also earned Best Play honors in the PPTC's 2010 festival. He is that festival's only two-time winner.
For the 2011 Pittsburgh New Works Festival, his play Off-Color Remarks was one of 12 scripts chosen for production from a field of more than 100 national submissions, and was ultimately one of three finalists for the festival's Outstanding Playwright Award. Ade also recently received the "Spotlight Award" for his latest play, Reports of a Home Invasion, produced at the Old Opera House during the 2013 New Voice Play Festival in Charles Town, W. Va. It was selected, along with only three other works, from 85 plays submitted across the country.
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.
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