2025 Pittsburgh New Works Festival Wrap Celebration
Dinner, Drinks, and Awards!

3:00 pm Sunday, October 5, 2025

You're invited to Celebrate the end of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival’s 35th season!  Eat, drink, and celebrate the Pittsburgh New Works Festival! Join the Festival actors, directors, and playwrights as we honor the work done by everyone who brought this Festival's world premiere plays to life!

Ticket includes light appetizers with a cash bar. Seating is limited.
Tickets are $25 per person.
Reservations must be made by October 1.  Tickets will not be available at the door.

The FOOLS 370 Rochester Rd. Pittsburgh, Pa 15237

 The Donna Awards

Awards will be given for Audience Favorite Production and the Outstanding contribution from a playwright which includes a $500 prize for best script.

Every year, the Festival recognizes an outstanding individual for their impact and service to the Pittsburgh region's theatre community.  The 2025 honoree is Dr. Jay Breckenridge who will Receive the Lifetime Achievement Award this year. Amy Joseph, President of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival Board, said, “We are thrilled to announce Jay as our Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.”

Dr. Jay Breckenridge has retired as Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts from Penn State Greater Allegheny, where he developed play scripts in collaboration with his students for performance each semester--drawn from the folklore of cultures around the world. The fall productions were designed to take on the road to local elementary schools as well for campus performances, and he developed a process of improvisation and mime with his students to prepare and perform the stories--with dialog added only after the physical actions of the stories were determined. The actors all performed in tee shirts and jeans to enable shifting from character to character (and often to become the scenery) in the multiple story plots--typically three short tales at a time for these fall productions. The spring productions focused on developing a single folk tale for campus performance only, with considerable research on the story’s cultural background and preparation of costumes and set.

His adaptation of a Japanese Kyogan style Japanese folk comedy, Sweet Poisons, won honorable mention in a Beverly Hills Theatre Guild competition, and his translation and dramatization of tales collected during a sabbatical semester at Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur has been published as Malaysian Folk Tales for Children’s Theatre. His international credits also include a week-long workshop at Universidad de Los Andes in San Cristobal, Venezuela, which resulted in the publication of a pair of Venezuelan folk tales and an article, “Dramatizing Folk Tales for the EFL class,” in the journal Accion Pedagogica at the university. The English-as-a-Foreign-Language methodology was also a feature of the Malaysian Folk Tales for Children’s Theatre.

Jay is a founding member of The Heritage Players community theatre company, where he has performed as an actor, director, and set builder since 1995—serving for many years as tech director for the company.  He directed his adaptations of Aristophanes’ The Birds, Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, and Jean Giraudoux’s Electra for Heritage Players productions. Favorite acting roles include Giles Cory in The Crucible and The Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof. He brought the company into The Pittsburgh New Works Festival in 1998 and was a part of the Heritage Players’ New Works productions for twenty years thereafter.

He also performed occasionally at Little Lake Theatre. Favorite roles there include Harpagon in The Miser, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, and Harsha the Rug Merchant in Madeline’s Christmas. He was likewise active in Shakespeare in South Park, including roles in The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth. In addition, he has designed and built many sets for South Hills Players in the social hall of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Castle Shannon.

In his other life, Jay performed for three decades as a juggler, storyteller, and stilt walker, both solo and with The World Emergency Circus, a “new vaudeville” trio which performed throughout the tri-state area. The troupe began work together as Fool’s Company at the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in 1982, under the direction of Mark Masterson. In addition to local venues, performances included engagements in Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Key West, Edmonton, and six years running at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. Jay also juggled at Kennywood Park as Uncle Sam on stilts during the 4th of July week for twenty-six seasons.

He lives in happy retirement with wife, Kathie, and dog, Baxter, and continues juggling his time with family activities, dog walks, an organic garden, and the baritone ukulele.

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award, PNWF will hand out two festival awards at the Wrap Party: an award for Audience Favorite, voted on by patrons who have seen all 14 plays from this year’s festival, and a $500 award to the Best Playwright, selected by a panel of five judges.