Squonk Opera Celebrates 20 Years at Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival

In celebration of 20 years of creating and performing original multimedia works in and from Pittsburgh, Squonk Opera will be doing 20 free shows all around Pittsburgh this summer, more local shows than they've ever done in a season.  They will premiere this next creation – GO Roadshow– at the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival with shows on June 8, 9 and 10.
 
GO Roadshowwill be a free street spectacle aboard a 34-foot long monster truck. This show-making machine will be retrofitted with truck-horn calliope, a wall made of rotors and a spinning grand piano that is played while it wheels around!  Each show will start with a shameless parade of peacock trumpets, spinning drums, accordion, sousaphone and glockenspiel. 
 
"GO is a music and art-mobile - a rolling ruckus that opens up like a mechanical blossom to make the street a vibrant place where people can share a community of the imagination," says Co-Artistic Director and composer Jackie Dempsey. Night shows will include video projected on a rotor screen made of movement itself, and on a blimp that will have a mouth that opens in a call to celebration.  "We are drawing from the great American history of traveling circuses, Shriner and holiday parades, Medicine Shows, and used car lot events that vitalized the heartland of this country," says Co-Artistic Director and chief designer Steve O'Hearn.  
 
Squonk Opera hails from Pittsburgh, has toured the world and played on and off Broadway.  They are celebrating their 20th anniversary of creating completely original work from Pittsburgh: no scripts from LA, or design from New York or music from London.  Squonk is just Pittsburghers making their own art and music.  And now, they are taking it to the street.
 
GO Roadshowhas been generously funded by Fisher Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Anonymous Donor, The Heinz Endowments, EQT Corporation, Henry C. Frick Educational Fund of the Buhl Foundation, Hillman Foundation, The Grable Foundation, The Fine Foundation and the PA Council on the Arts.  Commissioners include Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and many generous individual donors.
 
For more information, go to our website at http://www.squonkopera.org/
Final rehearsals will be held on Thursday, May 31 and Friday, August 1 from 2 to 10 pm at the Squonk Farm in Tarentum, PA.  If you would like details so you can stop by to chat or take photos, email Jackie Dempsey (contact info below).