Theater Guide February 2026: Pursue Your Happiness

As we enter America’s 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we are often reminded that many of the intellectual colonists who did so—surely risking personal arrest, banishment or death—would confirm their daring intentions in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution ten years later.  “To form a more perfect union” required “We, the people” to make better the means by which we secure our common liberty and pursue individual happiness.  Which is all meant to suggest that, at the heart of our ever-growing country is the drive to improve all that has come before.  

February’s theatrical offerings in Pittsburgh this year are each representative, to some degree, of taking a classic story and telling it better. Indeed, Ibsen’s classic drama about townspeople looking to improve their community will shed welcome light on the strength of character versus the will of the people. Another classic, perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous, is given devilish relevance in the world of the walking (and dancing?) dead. An American dance style lends its thunder to a history shamelessly unspoken and rarely visualized. The musical Annie explores a time in America’s past when necessary optimism was harder to find than Oxydent toothpaste. Truly in pursuit of happiness, Disney’s retake on a classic French fairy tale illuminates the very value of a village and what it takes to find love. Finally, the Pittsburgh Ballet and the Pittsburgh Opera each separately rejoice in telling stories of America’s obsession to defend itself from evil forces both foreign and domestic. February is a good month to stand up for your values and to sit down (in a theater) and appreciate the stories from which they came.

Shows are previewed below in two sections, Spotlight Picks for the month and Other Shows of Interest, followed by a look-ahead to Big Shows on the Horizon. Spotlight Picks are listed by run dates. The Theater Guide is created by the theater writers and editors of Entertainment Central including Mike Vargo (M.V.) and C. Prentiss Orr (C.P.O.).

Spotlight Picks

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Amy Herzog. Pittsburgh Public Theater. February 4 – 22.

Don’t be put off by the premise that this play, written in 1882 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, is about a doctor who discovers a potentially lethal bacteria. A grand, newly completed resort with fancy bathing spas has solicited many civic and business leaders to invest heartily in the vast profits their small town will surely earn. And don’t be put off by suspicions of corrupt policy makers or highly debatable issues of what constitutes good public health. (Really? A play about some unseen organism?)  No. An Enemy of the People, which opens at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, is actually about one person with moral principles standing up to self-dealing capitalists, standing against the economic interests of his community, and standing on his own for what he believes is right.

We all know this story because the conflict at its heart is singular, powerful, and complex: societal greed versus the common good. We hear it frequently these days. We all experienced the COVID epidemic and how our leaders, health experts, and the public at large grappled with common sense, masking protocols, and individual freedoms. We have heard our president call journalists enemies of the truth, inciting pundits left and right alike to question “whose truth?”  And we daily dive into discussion about tax structure, emergency tariffs, vaccine protocols, immigration reform, and how to carry out true justice for all.

We know this story, too, from hundreds of similarly structured plays, books, and films.  Remember that blockbuster movie about the island town Amity whose chief of police discovers evidence that a great white shark is scaring away the summer tourists? Indeed, Jaws is mostly about killing off “the deadly bacteria.” An Enemy of the People is about what one “chief of police” is willing to suffer to save others. Amy Herzog’s adaptation reels in Ibsen’s classic stage success. See An Enemy of the People at the O’Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Cultural District.  (C.P.O.)

ROMERO & JULIET (musical) with book & lyrics by Scott Logsdon; music by Aaron Gandy. BDE Productions. February 13 – 14.

He may not have invented the conceit of zombies rising from the dead, but Pittsburgh’s own George Romero, more than any other filmmaker, immortalized a genre of sci-fi horror films that has spawned a cult of the walking dead. Now comes a musical mashup of Shakespeare’s immortal tale of young lovers, Romeo and Juliet, with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, titled succinctly Romero & Juliet.  With a book and lyrics by Scott Logsdon and music by Aaron Gandy, the musical tale is set in mid-1980s Verona—that is, Verona, Pennsylvania, of course. While attending a music festival aptly called Deadstock, the human Romero falls for zombie Juliet and all of hell rises in this star-crossed romp that pays homage to the music of eighties pop icons Madonna, George Michael, Bon Jovi, and Boy George. 

The production at the Cultural Trust’s Greer Cabaret Theater will be a world premiere. Earlier staged concert performances were well attended both in Greensburg at St. Vincent’s College and at the Cutting Room in New York City. The cast is largely from the Pittsburgh area.  Christopher Patrick, a protege of acclaimed (and local) make-up artist, Tom Savini, will feature his grease paint talents. At the Greer Cabaret Theater, 655 Penn Ave., Cultural District.  (C.P.O.)

STEP AFRIKA! The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence (dance). Touring dance company at theByham Theater. 7:30 p.m., February 13.

If you’re not familiar with stepping, it’s something akin to tap dancing, syncopated hand-clapping, stomping, and vocalese all combined to generate a very percussive, rhythmic, and rousing style of modern dance. No, it is not derived from traditional African culture, but rather from fraternities and sororities of 1940s historically Black colleges and universities. It is a rare treat to experience because the more dancers that perform, the greater the sound and thrill. 

If you’re not familiar with Jacob Lawrence, he was an iconic painter who covered—almost as a journalist might—the Black experience from the early 1900s until his death in 2000. Lawrence was prolific, choosing to paint as many as 60 “panels” at a time, each dedicated to interpreting a series of events relevant to the Black experience. Step Afrika’s production draws from many of the panels Lawrence created in the 1940s depicting scenes of The Great Migration when southern Black workers went north during WWI to seek opportunity and escape Jim Crow laws. Finding work in industrial cities like Pittsburgh didn’t come easy nor did it resolve issues of segregation or outright racism. Lawrence, born in Atlantic City, had never been “down south” when he started his epic Migration Series.

At the invitation of Pittsburgh Dance Council, Step Afrika! performs The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence at the Byham Theater for one night only. 7:30 p.m. 101 6th St., Cultural District. (C.P.O.)

ANNIE (musical) by Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse, and Martin Charnin. Pittsburgh Musical Theater. February 19 – March 1.

Not many Broadway musicals are adapted from comic strips, but among them is one of the greatest. Annie won seven Tony Awards in 1977, including the major ones for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score. Since then, the show has been revived in productions worldwide. Lyricist Martin Charnin was inspired to create the musical after reading a collection of “Little Orphan Annie” comics. The long-running daily strip, launched by cartoonist Harold Gray in 1924, featured a spunky little girl who escapes a hard life in an orphanage when she’s taken in as a ward by one of the country’s richest men, Oliver (Daddy) Warbucks. The cartoon artist kept the series popular for decades by having Annie and Daddy drawn into exotic adventures, often involving sinister bad guys. Time and again, Annie’s grit combined with Daddy’s clout saved the day.

For the musical, lyricist Charnin teamed with playwright Thomas Meehan and composer Charles Strouse to create a new story. It’s a highly embellished origin story, in which Daddy and Annie are just starting to form a deep parent-child bond when they’re tested by events that threaten to split them apart. The show turned out to be both heartwarming and rollicking, as well as appealing to anyone who’s ever been a parent or a child—which covers a lot!  Pittsburgh Musical Theater presents Annie as its first production of 2026. Byham Theater, 101 6th St., Cultural District. (M.V.) 

AMERICA 250 (ballet program, various choreographers). Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. February 20 – 22. 

Ballet is a European dance form, historically speaking, but now Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre is updating that history. With this year being the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, PBT is presenting an all-American show. America 250 consists of four ballets rooted in our country’s culture. “The Mighty Casey”—choreographed by Lisa de Ribere—is a baseball number inspired by Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem “Casey at the Bat,” and set to music that composer Michael Moricz has drawn from various sources. George Balanchine’s “Stars & Stripes” is a rousing pas de deux danced to the heroic strains of John Philip Sousa. Paul Taylor’s “Company B” taps the World War II-era pop tunes of the Andrews Sisters, who were known for “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)” among other songs. And in a more classical vein, Ben Stevenson’s “Three Preludes” is a romantic ballet danced to a selection of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s piano preludes. All music is played by the PBT Orchestra. Enjoy Pittsburgh Ballet’s America 250 at Benedum Center, 237 7th St., Cultural District. (M.V.) 

DISNEY’S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.  National touring company via PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh. February 24 – March 1. 

There’s a variation of “You might be a redneck” called “You might be an intellectual.” For instance: If your favorite version of Beauty and the Beast is Jean Cocteau’s magnificently haunting black-and-white film, in French, with subtitles, you might be an intellectual! Normal folks know that the definitive version is the Disney animated movie. And if they’re fans of live theater, they love the musical adapted from it, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. This musical deepens the complexity of the characters of Belle and the Beast, so that normal folks don’t have to read Dostoevsky to get stories with psychological depth. The musical even has more songs than the movie and Dostoevsky combined. The current national touring production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is essentially sold out for its run in Pittsburgh, so people who don’t yet have seats must conjure up tickets from secondary sources. Presented as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series at Benedum Center, 237 7^th St., Cultural District. (M.V.) 

TIME TO ACT (opera) by Laura Kaminsky, with libretto by Crystal Manich. Pittsburgh Opera. February 28 – March 8. 
Pittsburgh Opera continues its practice of going beyond the traditional repertoire to stage contemporary and unusual operas. Next up is the world premiere of a new one from Boston-based composer Laura Kaminsky, known in part for work that explores social issues from a deeply personal viewpoint. In developing Time to Act, she teamed with librettist Crystal Manich to get input from young people on the impacts of gun violence and school shootings. The one-hour opera is set in a high school where the drama club plans to perform Sophocles’ Antigone—itself a play loaded with controversial themes. Reports of a nearby shooting, combined with the arrival of a mysterious new student, prompt the students to rethink how they’ll do the play. Time to Act was co-commissioned by Pittsburgh Opera along with Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Opera Montana, and Opera Santa Barbara (whose artistic director, Kostis Protopapas, came up with the initial concept for the opera and moved the project forward). Pittsburgh Opera presents Time to Act at the company’s Bitz Opera Factory. 2425 Liberty Ave., Strip District. (M.V.) 

University Theater

In addition to Pittsburgh’s professional and community theater companies we have many outstanding university theater programs as well. Check their box office pages for what’s onstage:

Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama
Duquesne University Red Masquers
Point Park University’s Playhouse
Robert Morris University
University of Pittsburgh Department of Theatre Arts

Other Shows of Interest
(By opening date)

Thursday, February 5
Chicago (Split Stage Productions)

Saturday, February 7
Isle of Noises (PICT Theatre)

Sunday, February 8
The Jury: An Immersive Courtroom Case (Fever)

Wednesday, February 11
Grand Kyiv Ballet Presents: Snow White (Kelly-Strayhorn Theater)

Thursday, February 12
Love Letters (Carnegie Stage)

Friday, February 13
The Importance of Being Ernest (Lincoln Park Performing Arts)

Thursday, February 19
Meet Me at the Oak (New Horizon Theatre)

Friday, February 27
Once in A While (Attack Theatre)

Big Shows on the Horizon
(By opening date)

March 7
Eureka Day (City Theatre)

March 10
Chicago (PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh)

March 20
Eternal Beauty (Texture Contemporary Ballet)

March 31
Water for Elephants (PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh)

C. Prentiss Orr is a Pittsburgh-based writer who covers theater and other topics for Entertainment Central. He is the author of the books The Surveyor and the Silversmith and Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred.

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