Mission

RealTime connects human beings through unique theatrical experiences.

Founded in 2015 in Pittsburgh, we create unique theatrical works that celebrate real people and real places—works that emphasize the interconnectedness of all human beings. Our values are evident in the work we make as well as how we make it: collaboratively and collectively. As a community-fueled theater company, we reach deep into local networks for partnership, talent, and inspiration. Every project is created by a diverse constellation of individuals with knowledge and experience reaching well beyond the arts, united by the story we’re telling together.

Real people.

Real stories.

RealTime.

Who? What? Why?

Who Are We?

We are longtime theater artists whose interests have shifted from solely inventing and shaping imaginary characters to unearthing, framing and celebrating the uniqueness of the real people around us.

RealTime began as a partnership between two theater artists whose artistic strengths complement each other. It’s also become a site where groups of diverse groups, artists, makers, and others gather to tell important stories together, influencing and inspiring each other in the telling.

What Do We Do?

Our projects have been described as “hyperlocal-meets-international.” They’ve also been described as “hard to describe.” From our first show The Saints Tour: Greater Braddock, in which we partnered with another theater company, local non-profits and almost 20 artists and musicians to create a borough-wide traveling theater work, to our true-crime concert musical "Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,” to our theatrical/ culinary work “Khuraki,” developed with a group of female Afghan refugees and partner organizations, resulting in a new Pittsburgh Afghan food business, one never knows quite what to expect of a RealTime intervention-- except that it'll be innovative, thought-provoking and well-crafted.

Why Do We Do It?

We’re inspired by liveness.

As “curators of wonder in the present tense”, we design theatrical experiences that lean into liveness. We believe that storytelling in shared spaces with screens powered down is more potent and vital than ever as an engine of empathy and connection. We seek to promote this sense of connection, curiosity and wonder, and help audiences see the world in new and unexpected ways.

We’re inspired by both process and product.

There’s great power in gathering around a common goal. RealTime’s work prioritizes the transformational potential of both making live art together, and what we make together. Collaboratively creating a new performance is often just as impactful to participants’ sense of self-efficacy, connectedness, and empathy as coming together to witness it. Thus, we serve multiple audiences with our projects: those that work together to make them happen, and those that come to see them.

We’re inspired by place.

A place shapes the people who reside in it, and leaves its stamp on those who move through it. RealTime is inspired by the complex relationships between people and places, and the unique resonances of a place often make their way into our work, making us “place-making” and “placekeeping” practitioners.

We’re inspired by how we’re all the same—and how we’re all different.

We are definitely all about making theater magic, generating that jolt of wonder for human beings gathered together; but we also seek to shrink the perceived distance between people that see themselves as belonging to/ accepted by one group and not another. We design our work for this purpose, inviting audiences from different populations to experience our work together, and we foster the discourse that naturally arises.

In our work’s content, research and process, we’re constantly striving to balance the seeming contradiction between the uniqueness of each culture and human being, and the interconnectedness of us all. We grapple with these in every work we create. How can we strive to honor both, simultaneously, in all that we do? To us, this gets at the core of what diversity and inclusion really means.

Photo Credits

Heather Mull; RealTime Arts.

Contact us

Our Current Rehearsal Space
The Hollander Project —the flagship initiative of our friends at ForGoodPGH—is a co-working space and business incubator for female entrepreneurs from Braddock and surrounding Mon Valley communities.

Accessibility
Live art is for everyone. We ask artistic collaborators and patrons with accessibility concerns to contact us and share their access needs so that we can meet them as effectively as possible. Please connect with our Access Liaison, Molly Rice.