OPA Live! Extended is a new Office of Public Art (OPA) program. This three-part series is a spin-off of OPA Live!, a 30-minute Instagram series that features Pittsburgh-based cultural producers in conversations with their peers around the country and globe. Inspired by this format, OPA Live! Extended will provide more time for live in-depth conversations and interaction with the audience. This series will be held remotely, via Zoom.

The first guests for OPA Live! Extended are actor, playwright, and director Brittney Caldwell and Jeffrey Pufahl, a Research Assistant Professor and publicly engaged applied theatre scholar at the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida. Part of the program will include a screening of Caldwell’s and Pufahl’s play From Colored to Black. The play explores the intersections between public health education, oral history performance, and community arts activism. The play functions as a multi-modal platform to communicate health data, historical research, and the lived experience of the Black community to the public.

In addition to the screening, Shaunda McDill, The Heinz Endowments’ Program Officer for Arts & Culture and founder of Demaskus Theater Collective, will moderate a 30-minute discussion with Caldwell and Pufahl about their work.