mission

RealTime creates performance-based art that connects human beings through empathy.

RealTime Arts creates theatrical events and public experiences that depend upon the immediate nature of real time: events that come to life when people come together. We seek to generate human connection, curiosity and wonder, and to help audiences re-see their surroundings in new and unexpected ways. RealTime creates narrative art in conversation with a broad range of collaborators, from theater artists to scientists to rock bands to social workers to our neighbors down the street. We create vibrant “companies” with every new project, peopled by individuals from diverse walks of life and realms of experience who are bound by their stake in the story we are telling together.

Real people. Real stories. RealTime.

our team

molly rice, artistic director (she/her)

… is a playwright/ songwriter/experience designer whose work has been developed and produced across the country. Her work (and writing about her work) can be seen in American Theater Magazine, The Dramatist, Dramatics Magazine, Kenyon Review, Play: A Journal,  Indie Theater Now, Clarkson Potter Press, Heinemann Press, and various national news sources including the New York Times. Honors include Brown University’s Weston Prize for Playwriting, Women’s International Theater Festival, Princess Grace Award (finalist), PONY Award (finalist), O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (2-time finalist), nominations for the New York Innovative Theater Awards, the Kesselring Fellowship, the Pittsburgh Mayor’s Award for Public Art, and Global Pittsburgh’s Organizational Diversity Champion award. She was a resident artist in New Work Initiatives at Montclair University and Pace University with director Rachel Chavkin (2019 Tony winner, Hadestown) and composer Orion Johnstone, and has enjoyed other residencies at the Orchard Project, Tofte Lake, Bard College, P73/Yale, and the Missoula Colony, among others. Projects beyond RealTime include Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps (book co-writer, additional text and story) at ART (Cambridge, 2012) and Soho Rep (Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical, 2016); and THE SAINTS TOUR, a site-specific traveling play that has appeared in neighborhoods across the country since 2009. Molly currently teaches in the Point Park Writing for Screen and Stage MFA program; her MFA is from Brown University, under Paula Vogel. 

rusty thelin, artistic director (he/him)

… is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, and attended the Hollins University Graduate Playwriting program.  He has worked with a number of notable theater companies in NYC, including 13P, Clubbed Thumb, Soho Rep, Bread & Puppet, The Brick, Teleotheatre Company and New Georges. Rusty graduated from the Broadway League’s Commercial Theater Institute, and has produced indie rock musicals including The GrooveLily’s ERNEST SHACKELTON LOVES ME (Seattle Rep, 54 Below, NYC’s Tony Kaiser Theater, Paramount @ ArtsEmerson); FUTURITY by The Lisps (HERE Arts Center, ART); STRUCK by Rebecca Hart and SOMETIMES IN PRAGUE by Orion Johstone & Johua Gelb (New Ohio’s Ice Factory); and CANARY by Molly Rice (New York Theatre Workshop, co-conceived & directed by Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin). As a director, Rusty has developed new plays and community-fueled work with playwrights such as Lucy Thurber, Maura Campbell, Justin Maxwell, and Molly Rice. He has directed classics like DEATH OF A SALESMAN, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, and HAMLET. Trained as a classical actor by members of the OSF and RSC, Rusty has appeared on stage as a number of Shakespearian characters, including Petrucchio in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, Caliban & the villainous Antonio in THE TEMPEST, and the good Antonio in TWELFTH NIGHT; he was nominated for an Irene Adler Award for originating the role of Jess in PAPER CUP OCEAN.  For RealTime, Rusty directs and produces original works, including THE SAINTS TOUR:  GREATER BRADDOCK and KHURAKI, as well as ANGELMAKERS:  SONGS FOR FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS, which he co-conceived with his partner Molly Rice.

our board

Divya Rao Heffley: Associate Director, Office for Public Art

Rebecca Johnson (Board Chair): Career Development Center Director at JFCS

Melanie Marshall: Mixed-Media Artist

Leilani Mears: IT Product Manager, PNC Bank

Kheir Mugwaneza: Program Manager, Allegheny Health Network/ Center for Inclusion Health

Brooke Glenn Mullin: Chief Financial Officer, Penrose Advisors, LLC

our current workspace