Colleen Doyno has spent more than three decades with Pittsburgh Musical Theater — a span of time that stretches past that name. The former Gargaro Productions (named for founder Ken Gargaro, also the namesake of the company’s home theater in the West End) has positioned itself not only as a producer of engaging and exuberant musical theater but also a leader in arts education. In that respect, Doyno is well suited for the executive director’s chair; she began as a performer and dance instructor at PMT before rising to conservatory director and general manager before assuming the company’s lead role in 2014. A deep lover of the genre, Doyno shared some thoughts on appreciating and watching musicals with TABLE Magazine in advance of PMT’s upcoming revival of Evil Dead: The Musical. When you’re done here, discover more about the Pittsburgh theater scene in our guide to the arts, culture, and entertainment scene of Pittsburgh.

Tips for Watching a Musical From Pittsburgh Musical Theater’s Colleen Doyno

• Musical theater has a unique ability to reach both the heart and the mind at the exact same moment. It combines storytelling, music, movement, design and human emotion into one shared experience that becomes almost visceral for an audience.
• A song can express what words alone sometimes cannot.
• What makes musical theater especially powerful is that it mirrors life in a heightened way. In real life, we all carry emotions that are often too big for conversation alone — joy, grief, fear, love, loneliness, hope. In musicals, those emotions are given melody, rhythm and movement — and suddenly audiences recognize themselves on stage in a very personal way.
• At Pittsburgh Musical Theater, we often see people come into a production thinking they are simply coming for entertainment, and they leave feeling seen, connected or changed.
• There is something incredibly communal about sitting in a theater with hundreds of strangers and collectively laughing, crying or holding your breath. In a world that increasingly isolates people behind screens, musical theater creates human connection in real time.
• I actually love hearing someone say, “I’m not really a musical theater person,” because usually that simply means they haven’t yet experienced the right production.
• People often think musicals are only spectacle or escapism, but the best musical theater is really about humanity. It is about relationships, struggle, identity, resilience, joy, heartbreak and hope. The music simply becomes the emotional language of the story.

Musical Theater is for Everyone

• We try to meet audiences where they are. We produce work that feels emotionally honest, visually compelling and deeply relevant to contemporary life. Shows like Dear Evan Hansen resonate because audiences recognize themselves, their children, or their own experiences in the material. Even someone who thinks they “don’t like musicals” understands what it feels like to want connection, acceptance or belonging.
• I also tell people that musical theater is one of the most accessible forms of art because it invites you in emotionally before you even realize it … You simply have to be open to feeling something.
• Certain productions invite people into the theater through something they already know and love from another form of storytelling. We see this often at Pittsburgh Musical Theater with productions [such as] Evil Dead: The Musical. Many audience members [for Evil Dead] may not consider themselves traditional “musical theater people” at all — they are horror fans, film fans or people who have a deep connection to a cult classic they already experienced through cinema. What draws them in is the opportunity to experience something familiar in a completely new and immersive way.
• There is something thrilling about seeing a story you know transformed live on stage, where the energy is immediate, unpredictable, and shared collectively with an audience.
• At PMT, we believe theater should feel welcoming and accessible to everyone, including audiences who may never have imagined themselves attending a musical. Sometimes all it takes is finding the right doorway into the experience.

As Told to Sean Collier
Photos From Pittsburgh Musical Theater

About the Author

Sean Collier is the editor-in-chief of Shady Ave and the arts and culture editor of TABLE Magazine. Before joining the TABLE Media team, he spent nearly 15 years as a writer, editor and columnist at Pittsburgh Magazine. As the in-house film critic for the top-rated WDVE Morning Show since 2009, he’s been Pittsburgh’s most widely heard voice on movies for nearly two decades. A Pittsburgh native, Sean has since 2020 appeared weekly on KDKA-TV’s popular Pittsburgh Today Live talk show. He’s the co-founder of Vigilance Theater Group and an active stand-up comedian and event host. He can be found on Instagram and Twitter at @seancollierpgh.

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