hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh both fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to courtney from fairy tale princess visit later this episode will be joined by andrew theory of little league theater on the first ever spotlight on pittsburgh holiday special full and they could use an extra hand now every state offers free or low cost health insurance sports or budding artist kids up to age nineteen can get checkups doctor and dentist visits hospital care prescriptions and more your child may qualify based on your family size an income it's one less thing to worry about call or go online to enroll now why w hi courtney and thanks so much for coming on the show today yeah well i am excited to be here because you know i like you well i like you and i like pittsburgh as well spotlighting somebody who i know who i'd like to does wonderful things is very important  can you tell me a little bit about fairy tale fairy tale princess visit i will go to first of all it's a mouthful second of all yes so i mean you could you could just you know say oh it's a princess company and i was kind of makes me go because we we work with the professionals we want to make sure it's not just a pretty girl in a pretty dress it's very theatrical very authentic experience that even the adults are going to enjoy and be immersed in and they do and we love that but it's it comes from a place of respect we want to respect the initial stories that were written you know eons ago we want to respect the adaptations we want to respect the parents who are giving their time and their money to a service and we want to spec the children because they're really intelligent so we want to give them something really really authentic and so how did you get into this well i was a singer dancer at the end parks for probably about fifteen years or so twenty years and when it came back to number and then suddenly people were coming to me i really don't know how it happened it was very happenstance it was very something that fell into my lap and i thought ok well this is fun and how much fun can that be to do it more so we  wanted to embrace it and do the best version of it that we could provide and you don't just do princesses you know no we have about forty different characters at this point we live very much in the realm of anything that i personally geek out about so i'm definitely not profit driven and i'm not i'm probably a very what's the word not common common businesswoman and that i'm driven by what inspires me creatively  inspired by storytelling i'm inspired by you know meeting with these children who are so of the i pad generation that you want to you want to bring something in that's old world you know what it is bring that storytelling in so we do yeah we have forty different characters ranging from mermaids to princesses to pirates to the to several different sort of whimsical ask characters of both male and female persuasion some science fiction as well so yeah we have lots of information on the websites which is pittsburgh princess dot com and in fact we have a lot of holiday entertainment we have the polar express conductor who goes out quite a bit this time of year we have christmas  if they're doing say a private party for their for their child's birthday or for a holiday party what can they expect never you fear you have the bare minimum is an hour or so worth of entertainment and we are going to for that entire hour run the show  i have two stepchildren and they've been in my life for nine years so since they were very small and i can tell you from the mom's perspective i know we're all kind of running in a hamster wheel and we're all you know you know but as they get older and they're doing so many more activities and they're into things you know that you're in this hamster wheel of scheduling and if i can come in or my team can come in and give you an hour of reprieve from that everyone wants that perfect  party and that's great but you know i just want to give mom a break i'm like if you have us come in we can at the bare minimum give you an hour of entertainment or we can even we can do a lot of sort of the decorating setting the keystone by putting in a backdrop for this character we provide the music we and like i said we provide the entire content of of the activities that happen during the party so that if your mom you don't have to be what is the next activity you don't have to be lining up the children you don't have think about what's coming next we're going to do that for you and all you have to do is enjoy it with your daughter or your son and i so just how much work goes into planning some of these events so much i might get one day off a week  just had a woman last weekend who said oh gosh we do this every week and i said yes we have about seven to fourteen parties a weekend on average and she said oh well so what do you do during the week what don't you do during the week but that's a very typical question and you know  certainly our characters don't show up you know i'm preparing prepared right so it takes it takes any character i would say even if they are pirate a very well known pirate  so yeah so we there's anything from that that character probably spent at least an hour in makeup prior to just coming to your party but the character also studied the character that they're portraying so it's you know you can't just show up and look like the person you have to be that character and so it requires a lot of studying now on my end of it if i know i'm doing the character stuff yes that applies to me as well but as far as logistics goes there's a lot that goes into it we are is a lot to for all you know you just do it in private events either you have other stuff that's coming up expected around the holidays can you tell us a little bit about that yeah sure we have a lot of for instance we just did you might have seen as the carnegie museum of natural history they had so we have a partnership with the frick our carolers will be caroline winter fridays at the for a which was well received last year i think it was their first year last year doing that and it's such a lovely place to come whether you're on a date or you're with small december we will also be at sea sion square for late at night this year as well as the following day so i know it's the evening of the seventeenth will be there with many characters  great variety in the characters that will be appearing at late at night is station square and then the following day they have sort of a sort of daytime version of that on the saturday morning following so we have that anything anything you can think of that's holiday driven and of course our ice queen and ice princess are very popular do you offer anything else for the parties as well as far as holiday i mean i'm just generally speaking it doesn't have to be having they have an underestimate of it right now which has been all over far as marketing goes you may have seen it i have seen it and they're having a special event that's an evening event we're all be actually bought bodypainting one of our actors who's a model and i'll be body painting her in the style of one of their corsets that's in the exhibit so that's something so but whether it's children's holiday you know face art or whether it's something more  offer that as well and it there is there anything else that i haven't talked about that i'm missing gosh i don't think so what's your favorite like what is your absolute favorite thing to do with the with either the princess's or the carolyn or generally speaking with generally honestly i'm just here to to spread positivity and make people smile i mean that's really it like i said i'm not profit driven i'm never going into anything which makes a very strange business person like i said but i that you know how much how much profit we can make as never my creative you know ignition it's always oh how much fun would that be and so what i love is having this idea of how much fun they would that be and then going and spending a day with a family who just has the most absolute most fun time and we we treat them like our own family and we really create great bonds with these families too which is nice and a s and and then we make lifelong friends so it's kind of a nice thing in oh and we have a partnership with beverly's birthdays as well providing helping provide birthday parties to children in pittsburgh that are in group homes and shelters through beverly's birthdays are kind of yes well courtney thank you so much and they heard it will be bringing back out there to get a little bit don't forget to find out the whole schedule and learn more about what fairy tale princess visits has to offered this season by visiting pittsburgh princess dot com will be returning right after the break with the theatrical jewel of nick murray's a little big theater with managing director andrew  c sometimes it's hard to see where you go in that you have the power to change your problems all it takes courage hi and welcome back andrew so thankful to have you here to be here what can you tell us about the little lake theater and what's going on there this holiday season well little lake itself has been around since one thousand nine hundred eighty nine we started man named will disney as mother literally were driving down route nineteen they were looking for a place to create a theater and talk to a farmer whose name mcdowell we are now on mcdowell road it's named after mr mcgowan ask him if they could start a theater in his barn and that's literally yeah yeah luckily i did i handle the business side so i don't have as many of those late nights as as all of our actors do all of our actors are volunteers so they commit their time and their effort you know and their investment in the organization  through that so it's one of the wonderful things about being a community theater we're a community theater with professional standards so we try to have as much production quality in the best productions that we can we can have but we're all community volunteer actors and it really is a wonderful welcoming kind of family atmosphere a place that people really love being at both to come see shows and also be part of them so and so you're relatively new there crack i just celebrated my one year anniversary earlier osier which is fantastic we just heard about a grant from the heinz and down once for one of our shows next year i will be doing shakespeare's make bath for the first time and we receive the sixteen thousand dollar grant to really blow that production out of the water wonderful and so we're going to do the production includes performances in local parks that will be free and open to the general public will have a couple student shows so students from local high schools can come and see a performance the play and then we'll actually be taking some of the action of the show outdoors so portions of the first part of the play will happen on different places on our campus so that the audience can kind of move from location to location experience the very interactive part of macbeth in a whole new way it's going to be very interactive and it's the first time we've done that show and for something like macbeth which is a theater classic for over four hundred some years it's a big deal for us to do  that so that's been great we are slowly announcing our twenty eight hundred season we're kind of teasing it out as time goes on don't give it all away and i won't and i won't but actually in a couple weeks you'll be able to see everything if you follow us on facebook we do what's called the twelve days of little lake from december first through the center twelfth will announce our eleven main stage shows one a day and highlight them say talk about the show why why you want to come is it a comedy is it a drama is a farce is a musical we do a couple musicals every year and then on the twelfth day last year we did a kind of a recap video of that on facebook live and will probably do something similar again this year so we're slowly announcing that if you'd like quite a little bit because i had to ask that question to a tuna christmas was the show that was mentioned to me about the audience before i even started on the job it is the most requested show that we do ever the audience requests to every year it is set in the third smallest town in texas is how it's described and it features a cast of two people playing about twenty two different characters male and female how christmas itself centers on a christmas card competition that one of the characters is one for fourteen years running but there's a lot of others any and crazy subplots that happen in this it's one of four plays that are set in texas i have not seen this yet it is very much a phenomenon with our audience it's a very popular show it was written earlier in the in the two thousand and it was  was actually done as a command performance by the original cast of the white house for george w bush very popular show our audiences absolutely love it it's selling very well at this point so by the time everybody sees this if you haven't got your tickets order right now because you may not get them otherwise it sells out pretty much every year so and your theaters are a little bit different in the way it's shaped and yeah that's a really good way to put that we're solely theater in the around now that's the the atrical term but we're actually a square so our stage is in a square and the audience sits on all four sides so and they're never further than twenty five feet from the stage so it's a very intimate environment we only see about one hundred seventy five hundred eighty people so it's a very intimate very comfortable environment to see live local theatre and often featuring actors that you might just see in giant eagle on their day off you know or working their day jobs  christmas runs from november thirtieth through december sixteenth thursday friday and saturday nights for three weekends and then our second holiday show is really perfect for the entire family it's called yes virginia the musical and it's inspired by the famous newspaper editorial that ends with you know yes virginia there is a santa clause to show that was created actually by macy's several years ago following up on their t v special about for ginia and all of the all of the special holiday things that they do so we're going to be doing that and this is the first time this is public knowledge but i have been drafted into the show as a whole why and santa so if there's any reason exactly so we'll see that opens thanksgiving weekend we have special performances on friday and saturday night thanksgiving weekend seven o'clock is when the house opens we're going to have a letter writing station to santa we're going to have santa himself there to meet everybody we'll have ornaments that you can decorate kind of customize things in will have cookies and treats and everything that's from seven eight really make it a fun family thing and then eight o'clock the show happens for us regina the musical we then have that show on saturdays and sundays for the month of december and there's one other special performance i should mention about that this is the first year that little lake has been able to offer sensory friendly performances  performances are essentially taking one of our normal shows and adapting it slightly to make it easier for families and individuals who have autism or sensory processing disorders to experience a theatrical event so i somebody needs to take a break during the performance they can exit the theater hang out for a little bit come back next year will be presenting three sensory friendly shows one of each of our summer children's theatre programs thanks to a grant from the washington county community so it's something we're really proud of that we're doing i'm really happy that we're doing so yes virginia runs from the vendor twenty fourth through december seventeenth and all this all this information can be found at our website which is little lake dot org or you give us a call at seven two four seven four  five six three zero zero and aside from your shows us either you do camps correct yes yes our camps we offer five to six different camps each summer it's we've of fun tech camp so you can learn how to make props and design costumes and then probably the cutest one is our be a star camp which is for six to nine year olds so that little little kids can kind of just dip their toe in the water  exactly exactly so and they're only one week longer day camps from nine the twelve or ten to twelve so it's a really affordable option for children to get involved in theater and a lot of those kids will become involved in our theater as actors or were as high school premises with their company to write with thank you so much anger you're very welcome thank you it sounds like this holiday season in pittsburgh will be absolutely magical please visit little lake or to check to check showtimes and thank you so much and and courtney for coming on spotlight on pittsburgh when we come back from our break we will bring them both back out for a little holiday trivia challenge cared about and i'd be over thinking about what happened in iraq three months ago you're almost like a stranger when you come back everything is different to your kind of discombobulated people were asking me how it was but i got this sense dave couldn't relate to what i had been through so i just stopped talking about it it made a tremendous difference in my life when i chose to get help in hindsight it probably saved my life save my marriage i personally believe that i'm also a better soldier sometimes when you come home you can see negative distressing concern you can all be out soon will be got you're not going to be the same person afterwards that you were before you deployed don't try to be accept who you are now figure out how to move forward and make that pos and welcome back spotlight on pittsburgh all right it's my favorite time which is our trivia challenge and this week we have a holiday trivia challenge when it comes to movies now courtney here has had her carolers on love the cooper yet which was shot here in pittsburgh with diane keaton correct yes i have to make sure i have all the details correct now courtney you were asking andrew for a moment about the children's camps correct yes and he was saying that they've changed everything up and it's pretty exciting so we changed everything this past year we saw for two two week camps and we switch them down just a one week camp so it's a shorter time commitment and we offer so many different ones that i was talking about before so it's an easy way really just to get just get your first experiences in theater and i really accessible rate so that's great so you guys are both helping so many kids out in the area and keeping them in with theater and  princesses and all kinds of fun stuff that's you know i think today in this this world of digital everything it's nice to give them a creative outlet imagination mortons yeah and there's nothing like an actual life performance which we both offer you don't find the same thing just watching it on a screen you really don't know that it's a very different experience and theater is one of those last places where we actually get together and have a complete communal experience and so i think that's important to preserve and to maintain everywhere we go and then only that from our standpoint we're always saying gosh if there's one child in that group that feels like they want to grow up and you know be something creative then we've done our job absolutely for sure absolutely all right so this isn't theater as much as a i didn't want to you know i just didn't want to go that far because i need to be too good at it so i went with the screens the silver screen what this one's i don't know i thought everybody knew this movie but i was brutally told that it was not true so what movie has ten department an apartment a toy store an apartment and a prison set in a psychiatric hospital so it actually staged in a psychiatric hospital oh but it wasn't in the was a miracle on thirty fourth street  appropriate oh there is an elderly musical there and then quickly the last question the movie had to quote isn't it wonderful i'm going to jail yeah i'm drawing a blank on that one too well it is it's a wonderful life where which is so great thank you currently under so much for being on the show and we look forward to all the tears and happiness that you're going to bring us this holiday season