Pitt Rep actors talk shop

Pitt teaching artist Elena Alexandratos says Pitt Rep’s newest play, “The Bear ‘ The… Pitt teaching artist Elena Alexandratos says Pitt Rep’s newest play, “The Bear ‘ The Proposal ‘ The Wedding,” reminds her of a Faberge egg.

Open it up and you get a carousel stage design, bright costumes, lights and carousel-like music. Pitt teaching artist Doug Mertz added, “The whole evening has been created with a sort of a circus or carnival feel to it. Our main set is on a carousel with all these running lights around it.”

Alexandratos and Mertz share an office in the Cathedral of Learning Theatre Arts Department, and they are portraying each other’s unexpected lovers in “The Bear.”

Smirnov (Mertz) is an “independent rough guy” who falls in love with Popova (Alexandratos) after he comes to her house requesting the money her dead father owes him. The play, set in Russia in the 1860s and 1880s, carries Popova and Smirnov through three of Chekhov’s disparate, farcical plays. That is, director W. Stephen Coleman took Chekhov’s lead characters in “The Bear” and inserted them into the action of two other Chekhov plays, “The Proposal” and “The Wedding.”

Alexandratos explained the thread of the plays: “What Stephen did was take the characters that Doug and I portray, Popova and Smirnov, and he takes the two of us as the anchors