December 5, 2023
By Shannon Musgrave

CMU Drama Teams up with City Theatre Company for Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley

This holiday season at City Theatre Company on Pittsburgh’s South Side, audiences are invited to Pemberley – the famed estate from “Pride and Prejudice” where Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and his new bride, Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, are hosting a Christmas to remember.

The production is not only a celebration of holiday cheer and Jane Austen romance, but also a parade of CMU talent, as the team bringing this play to life includes a whopping 15 School of Drama artists! The set, costumes, lights, dramaturgy, production management, dialects, direction, and three of the performances all come by way of CMU.

For senior acting and music theater students Leyla Davis, Sophia Macy, and Alex Sheffield, the production serves as a bridge between their academic and professional careers.

“For students to have a chance to work at a professional theater at this point in their development is a really exciting opportunity,” said Kyle Haden (senior associate head and associate professor of acting in the School of Drama, and the director of “Pemberley”) in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It was super exciting to get to work with them professionally and help them take that step in their journey.”

Scenic designer and professor emerita Anne Mundell and costume designer and associate teaching professor of costume production Hugh Hanson both worked with recent grads and current students to help bring their visions for Pemberley to life. Scenic design alumni Jennifer Gould, Samantha Pollack, and Sasha Schwartz assisted with the set and prop design, and current third-year MFA costume production student Danielle Dulchinos worked with Hanson as a draper. Recent lighting design graduate Pablo D. Antón returned to Pittsburgh to light the show, and dramaturgy alumna Lindsay Barr ensured a cohesive understanding of the world of the play as the production’s dramaturg. City Theatre’s full-time staff includes co-artistic director Marc Masterson, a 1978 School of Drama grad; co-artistic director Clare Drobot, a 2004 School of Music grad; and production manager Rachel D’Amboise, who earned her MFA in Stage & Production Management from the School of Drama in 2018.

The full list of Carnegie Mellon School of Drama artists who worked on Pemberley is below.