Mary Beth Gigler, an empathetic arts educator and director who had a profound effect on her students’ lives, died on March 12 at home in Reserve Township.
Some of her students went on to have professional performance careers, including Emmy, Grammy and Tony-winning actor-singer Billy Porter and Tony and Grammy-winning actor and singer Christian Borle.
Her family said she died from complications of primary progressive aphasia. She was 76.
Ms. Gigler taught and directed student plays and musicals at Seton LaSalle Catholic High School, Pittsburgh CAPA and Shady Side Academy, as well as at the Center for Theater Arts. She also directed plays at other locations in western Pennsylvania, including South Park Theater and Point Park University's Pittsburgh Playhouse.
“One of the most special memories many of us have of Mary Beth was her annual spring musical production,” her stepdaughter Kelley Young said in a statement. “She didn’t often do the classics; she usually chose new or obscure shows that challenged her students to go beyond what they knew — shows she herself had seen on Broadway.”
Dan Brill was the choral director and pit orchestra conductor at Shady Side Academy when he went to see a production of “Pippin” at Seton LaSalle High School. Ms. Gigler was about to begin work at Shady Side as the theater director and an English teacher.
“It was wonderful,” he said of the musical. “I was very excited and happy to have her come aboard.”
Once at Shady Side, Mr. Brill said that Ms. Gigler faced some creative challenges.
“We had a stage that was about 23 feet across and no wing space and no fly space,” he said of the stage at the time, referring to offstage areas and storage space above the stage.
“It was very challenging,” Mr. Brill said, “but it was invigorating because when you have to be that creative and you see it work, you get pretty fired up about it.”
Under Ms. Gigler’s theatrical direction, the school won several Gene Kelly Awards, which recognize local high school thespians — including Best Musical, for “Pippin” in 1992, Mr. Brill recalled.
Billy Hartung, now executive director of Mt. Lebanon’s Center for Theater Arts, was a student of Ms. Gigler at the school he now heads. (Also, as it happens, he was the star of the Seton Lasalle production of “Pippin” that Mr. Brill had seen.)
Ms. Gigler was Mr. Hartung’s first acting teacher, when he was a student at the Center for Theater Arts. With Ms. Gigler’s encouragement, he later entered Seton LaSalle High School, where she was teaching.
He and Ms. Gigler remained in touch throughout his career. She attended “Side Show” on Broadway, Mr. Hartung’s first Broadway show. He subsequently appeared in the Broadway musical version of “Footloose” and the movie “Chicago.”
“Mary Beth was with me through it all,” Mr. Hartung said.
She also supported him when he began to consider teaching as a career. She informed him when there was an opening at Shady Side, where they then worked in the English department together. They there produced a student performance of “Footloose,” in which Mr. Hartung had been an original Broadway cast member.
Later, when he became the executive director for the Center for Theater Arts, the place where he had first met her when he was 8 years old, she continued to support him.
“She probably came to a decade of shows” at the school, he said. “Mary Beth was an incredible teacher for me, but she was also a cheerleader. I learned so much from Mary Beth from, I call it, her ‘heartistry.’ She’s the reason I became an arts educator.”
Ms.Gigler was born on Sept. 2, 1948, to Elmer B. “Dutch” and Elizabeth Gray in Aberdeen, S.D., where her father played professional baseball for the Aberdeen Pheasants.
The family eventually settled in Pittsburgh, where later in his career Dutch Gray became a Pirates scout. Ms. Gigler graduated from Keystone Oaks High School in 1966. She earned a bachelor's degree from Seton Hill University in Greensburg, where she met her future husband, Fred, and then went on to earn a master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
She is survived by her husband, Fred, and her sons Chip and Matthew Fisher, both of Sarasota, Fla., and Mark Fisher of Kennedy Township, as well as stepdaughters Kelley Young, of Auburn, Ala., and Suzie Vuksan, of Greensburg, and 12 grandchildren.
First Published: April 13, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
Updated: April 14, 2025, 2:15 p.m.
