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Macbeth makeover: Play to showcase Oakland Square
Macbeth makeover: Play to showcase Oakland Square

Bob Donaldson, Post-GazetteHomeowners Kate and Jeff Maurin, and playwright, actor, director and drywall specialist Stephen Pellegrino, right, in the Maurins' Oakland Square home, where Mr. Pellegrino is staging his play "22 Drywall Macbeth." The audience will move through the home, which is largely stripped to its studs for renovation.
Pellegrino, left, runs over a scene with actors Jeffrey R. Simpson, center, and Brian Czarniecki staged in a building materials scrap pile outside Jeff and Kate Maurin's Oakland Square home.

Live theater makes its debut on Oakland Square Wednesday night, in a gutted house in which we find Macbeth as a drywall contractor.

"22 Drywall Macbeth" is Stephen Pellegrino's latest in a numbered series of plays, films, art installations and musical scores that play off what he does for a living. But this work has an ulterior motive.

"My ultimate goal is real estate," said Mr. Pellegrino. He wants people from outside the neighborhood to see Oakland Square, not as another student enclave but as a stable opportunity for home ownership.

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He bought the house in 2001 and began performing triage on it; the property had not been maintained for 50 years, he said.

Kate and Jeff Maurin bought it from him in April intending to rehab and sell it to an owner occupier. They hired him as a contractor, not realizing they would become set managers for a dramatic spoof.

"When he talked to us about doing a 'Macbeth' adaptation in the house, we didn't know what to make of it," said Mr. Maurin, "but we said, 'What the heck, it'll be an interesting way to get people into Oakland Square.' "

As an intro to the play each night of the run, Mr. Pellegrino will lead a walking tour to the Maurins' property starting at 7:45 p.m. sharp from the corner of Parkview Avenue and the Boulevard of the Allies.

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The play, at $10 per person, runs from Wednesday night through Saturday night. Reservations are required.

Call 412-683-7535 or reserve online at plasteraccordion@verizon.net.

Act I opens in the front room, where three witches -- versions of Shakespeare's Weird Sisters -- represent the Three Witches Realty Co.

"It seemed only right that the three witches be Realtors," said Mr. Pellegrino. "Two of the witches are jaded and think it's fine to sell to a buyer who would jam students in and get $4,000 a month without doing anything," he said. The idealistic witch believes the neighborhood can turn around and become more stable.

Oakland Square is actually considered to be a stable part of Oakland. Two years ago, it became part of a city historic district that includes Parkview Avenue and part of Dawson Street.

Of 26 homes on Oakland Square, a U-shaped street with a park in the median, one-third are owner-occupied. Most rentals are owned by nearby residents, but that proximity hasn't always been an influence.

Janice Markowitz, an almost lifetime resident of the square, described numerous house parties that have kept her awake into the night, people wandering drunk and noisy and cars blocking driveways.

"Anyone who underestimates the impact that has on the quality of a person's life is surely mistaken," she said. "I hear people say, 'Get over it. This is Pitt. We pay to go to school here.' So, would I love to see Oakland Square just for homeowners? Absolutely."

"It isn't bad to have some students," said Mr. Pellegrino. But if they want to live on Oakland Square, the house where Macbeth the drywall contractor kills Duncan the general contractor will not be available.

In what will be a bedroom upstairs, Macbeth invites Duncan to a party, said Mr. Pellegrino. "We'll have a live band and serve food. The audience will be guests at the party, and the idealistic witch will take them on a tour of the house."

This is where reality meets fiction, he said. "This is a pre-house tour" for anyone in the audience who might be thinking about buying in Oakland Square.

"People looking to buy a house don't always look at Oakland first," said Mr. Maurin. "They may like the idea of living in Oakland, but a house that's ready to move into may not be available."

The Maurins met as students at the University of Pittsburgh. He rented on Atwood Street, "an awful place," but her rental on Parkview "was pretty nice." When they bought, they bought on Parkview because it had proved to them that "Oakland wasn't just for students," he said. "Getting word out is a problem."

Mr. Pellegrino, 53, lived on Oakland Square as a Pitt student. He and his wife, Mary Shea, have raised two children there in 25 years as homeowners.

He has had productions at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and the Mattress Factory, among a long list of creative adventures, and been commissioned by the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He said he does plaster and drywall in part because "there's no way I could make my living in Pittsburgh in experimental theater."

"I think what I'm doing is eccentric, but I can't help it," he said. "My wife thinks I do plays to generate business as a contractor, but it's the reverse: I plaster every day to generate an audience."

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