ghosts of the furnace
“Intriguing… It was great and a little scary at the same time.”
Audience member
A Little Amal Welcome Performance
On September 20th 2023, as the sun set, almost 200 audience members wearing white convened at Carrie Furnace to play “the ghosts of Carrie Furnace” in RealTime’s interactive theater experience “ghosts of the furnace.” They were joined by a cast of community members and professional actors, two fire dancers, and a rock band led by Ukrainian refugees Oleksandr Frazé Frazénko and Mari Trush: Frazé Frazénko and the Happy Lovers. They were also joined by Little Amal, a 12-foot tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl.
Crafted by the South African Handspring Puppet Company, Little Amal has been traveling around the world since 2021 looking for her mother; throughout the fall of 2023, she journeyed 6,000 miles across the United States in one of the largest free public festivals ever created. More than 300 artists, museums, local community organizations and cultural institutions hosted welcome events in the 37+ towns and cities that Little Amal visited. In Pittsburgh, events for Little Amal were created by RealTime Arts, Pittsburgh Public Theater/ August Wilson Cultural Center, Shiftworks Community + Public Art, and Casey Droege Cultural Productions/ Hatch Arts Collective in an all-city show of support for refugees across the world.
Creative Team
Written by Molly Rice; directed by Rusty Thelin with Cynthia Croot.
Stage managed by Catherine Kolos with Amelia Heastings.
Featuring: Frazé Frazénko & The Happy Lovers, with Mari Trush & Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko (recipient of City of Asylum’s Fellowship for Ukrainian Writers); Lovely Lady Lydia & Emily Ruth Barlow as the Fire Ghosts (fire dancers); Alison Weisgall as the Ghost Queen; Gibson Hallisey as the Ghost Prince and didgeridoo player; Lish Banks, Catherine Baird and Laura Karner as the Ghost Elders; Michele Boehm, Gina Rosso, Christina Parisi, Elizabeth Ansell, Aerin Adams, Megan Johnston, Melanie Marshall, Vivi Campbell, and Brooke Mullin as the Ghost Guides.
Light-flowers by Swissvale artists Katy DeMent and Melanie Marshall.
Audience member
“Most moving for me was Amal resting her hands and head against the rusted metal.”
Audience member
“Moving, awesome, momentous.”
Photo Credits
Dominique Murray.
