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Saturday, July 13, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

Melanie Dreyer has good news for us. As a newcomer to Pittsburgh, knowing only its working-class reputation and medium size, she was surprised and pleased to discover "lots of theater with a good mix." And we're friendly, too. Within three months, "I met everyone [in the small professional theater world] and felt welcome. It was a breath of fresh air."

	Melanie Dreyer says "I'm full of ideas and I love to be in charge. As a director, you're the king or queen." (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

That's in contrast to St. Louis, where she founded and ran a small professional company she describes as "sort of like the Quantum Theatre of St. Louis." There, the theater community is smaller with "an environment of in-fighting, and newcomers are shut out."

Dreyer moved here to teach theater at the University of Pittsburgh, where she runs the undergraduate performance program and has already directed two plays -- the premiere of "Silent Spring," last year, and Moliere's "Learned Ladies," this. But she's also developed a relationship with the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, first serving as Andrew Paul's assistant director on last summer's "The Seagull" and then getting the nod to direct "She Stoops to Conquer," which opens tonight.

"She Stoops," the 1773 Oliver Goldsmith comedy classic about the shy aristocrat and the woman who plays barmaid to cure him, seems like an odd piece for Dreyer's professional Pittsburgh debut. But "for a girl who really loves new plays and the avant-garde, I do direct a lot of classics," she says, "allowing me to stretch my range."

Her avant-garde St. Louis company, ShatterMask Theater, had a three-year run, 1994-96, producing theatrical, nonrealist scripts in what she calls a predominantly "conservative, racist, Bible-belt town." She was warned, "this will not succeed," but, she admits, "when someone tells me I can't, I consider it a challenge." In any event, her company was "a huge hit. We filled a hunger."

	"She Stoops to Conquer" WHERE: Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre at City Theatre, 13th and Bingham, South Side. WHEN: Through July 27; 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays and July 27. TICKETS: $20-$25 (student rush $14); 412-394-3353.

ShatterMask was an all-Equity company playing a summer schedule in a 150-seat black box theater. Dreyer paid attention to details: For example, the company had a glossy magazine program because "the St. Louis moneyed community is fashion- and appearance-minded." In contrast, she finds reverse chic works better in Pittsburgh, which appreciates grit.

Unlike artists who dare you to love their art or leave it, Dreyer would rather educate, not alienate. Her company provided pre-show talks, post-show discussions and large sheets of butcher paper for audiences to post their responses and encourage dialogue -- like a communal art project. "Theater became part of the community, not an elitist project," she says. "Running that theater company was my greatest learning experience."

Not that she hasn't had the other kind of learning. Dreyer has a B.A. from the University of Denver, M.A. from Washington University and M.F.A. from Northwestern University in Chicago, where she went after leaving St. Louis. When she finished that degree, although her goal might be to run a theater company again, "I knew I needed a real job." Pitt's offer was the most attractive "because I was looking for a community. Also, it's midway between New York, Chicago and Washington" -- places where she would like to direct.

Like most, Dreyer's original theater commitment was as an actor. When a teen-ager, "I decided I was going to be an actress and definitely a star." She graduated from college "absolutely full of confidence that I'd take New York by storm." But the reality was brutal -- a great many other actors who knew the ropes a lot better. In 3 1/2 years in New York, she says, she "worked some and studied a fair amount. I loved being a starving actor."

But she fell in love with a man from St. Louis and moved there. Simultaneously, "I transferred my creative passions from one side of the footlights to the other. [I learned that] I'm full of ideas and I love to be in charge. As a director, you're the king or queen. As an actor, you're only in charge of your own corner of the universe and you work under the umbrella of the director."

	Dreyer, center, offers pre-rehearsal pointers to "She Stoops to Conquer" cast members Michael Fuller and Colleen Delany. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

In St. Louis, she also learned German. She took her first class as part of research for "Cabaret," which she was directing at Washington University. She loved the language and its literature, so she began to study in earnest, but the defining moment may have been when a drama critic told her she was too old to learn German. "That was enough for me," she says -- the challenge was a spur.

Now fluent, she says she speaks with an accent that strikes Germans as either Spanish or Dutch. She has visited Germany frequently and done theater work there. Not coincidentally, her husband is German -- Peter Lude, who also has moved to Pittsburgh and is in the heating and cooling business. They have a son, Cassidy, 11 months old. In fact, her assistant director stint on PICT's "Seagull" last summer coincided with her pregnancy, and she had to miss tech week to give birth.

Dreyer is full of ideas, such as a bilingual co-production with actors from Pittsburgh and Germany. She speaks of "a Melanie Dreyer production," which she defines as one that engages the audience. "I am a woman of action," she says. Her history bears her out.