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These rule-breakers work in established arts institutions or artistic disciplines but have managed to boldly infuse their work with high-quality inventiveness

Sunday, June 02, 2002

Christopher Hahn
Artistic director, Pittsburgh Opera

	Christopher Hahn

Hahn gets the nod here, but he shares credit with general director Mark Weinstein and music director John Mauceri for the successful financial and artistic revamping of the Opera. Former head Tito Capobianco may have been edgy earlier in his career, but he was conservative during his last decade at the helm. The company made its way onto the national cultural map this season, the first that Hahn and Mauceri programmed. Hahn's risks with two new productions -- "Don Giovanni" and "Lucia di Lammermoor" -- paid off, headlining a season of bold sets seen for years everywhere but Pittsburgh. Staging and singing has reached higher levels as well (including the Opera Center trainees), and audiences have responded.

Pittsburgh Glass Center

A consortium of glass enthusiasts including Kathleen Mulcahy (artistic director), Post-Gazette chairman emeritus William Block Sr. (initial funder) and Allyson Halpern (director) persisted for eight years to create a world-class glass studio and teaching facility in Friendship. With the arrival of new executive director Dyana Curreri-Ermatinger and its first artist-in-residence, Robin Stanaway, the center's first class of students is breathing life into its furnaces and workshops.

Tracy Brigden
Artistic director, City Theatre

In her first year as Marc Masterson's successor, Brigden's mainstage play selection has nudged City a bit closer to the cutting edge. In the studio theater, she has expanded City's own programming, both feel-good ("Mondo Mangia") and tragic ("Blackbird"). She hopes to inaugurate a new-play festival and is working with managing director David Jobin to innovate offstage programming, especially for young adults.

Natalie Forbes
Executive director, Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society.

Forbes has been an invigorating presence, booking excellent chamber groups and reaching out to the community and schools to fill spacious Carnegie Music Hall. This season, she developed a project Pittsburgh has never seen before: five concerts in one weekend of the Orion String Quartet playing all of Beethoven's string quartets, an artistic and box-office success.

Karla Boos
Founder and artistic director, Quantum Theatre

A year of being able to work full-time for her own company has given Boos and Quantum greater stability, and new staff help is on the way. But Quantum remains purposefully freeform and innovative, a theater literally on the move, camping out in successive, unlikely new spaces and introducing playwrights Pittsburgh has rarely heard of, let alone seen.

Arthur Ziegler and Barry Hannegan
President and director of Historic Design Programs, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation

Each credits the other with the idea, so we honor both. Hannegan and Ziegler launched a public space design competition in 2001 that invited architects, landscape architects and artists under the age of 35 to imagine how Pittsburgh's public squares could be redesigned. This year, they sponsored a similar competition for "orphaned spaces," raised the prize money to $10,000 and attracted 19 entries packed with fresh, inventive ideas.