Ted Hoover

Ted Hoover has worked in local theater as a playwright, director, actor, producer and theater critic.  His plays have been performed in New York, California, Canada and many cities in between. His play Eulogy was a winner of the Eugene O’Neil Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference (this country’s highest honor for new work) and his plays, A Dry Season and Welcome Home were O'Neill finalists. In 1996 he was the (youngest-ever) recipent of the Lifetime Achievement in Pittsburgh Theatre Award presented by the Pittsburgh New Works Festival.

He was a founding member and co-artist director of Pyramid Productions, a company dedicated to the development and production of new plays by Pittsburgh Playwrights and the Pittsburgh Queer Theatre, Pittsburgh’s first theater company to explore LGBT themes. He also helped organize and run the Pittsburgh Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival.

A sometime actor, Ted starred in the local premieres of Mister Charles Currently of Pal Beach (Mr. Charles), Ruthless (Sylvia St. Croix), Torch Song Trilogy (Arnold Beckoff), The Lisbon Traviata (Mendy) and Assassins (Sam Byck.) Other favorite roles include Saunders in Lend Me a Tenor and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.

He has directed for many theater companies both locally and regionally. In 1987 Ted became the first in-house theater critic for In Pittsburgh Newsweekly.  In 1999 he left In Pittsburgh to become the drama critic for Pittsburgh City Paper.  He spent eight years reviewing movies for the late Planet Q and was a regular columnist for the local Out Magazine.

He was named one of nine Pittsburgh “Movers & Shakers” by the national newsmonthly Out Magazine and he was one of the “40 Under 40” achievers singled out by Pittsburgh Magazine.  He is a recipient of a Playwriting Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and received an anonymous $10,000 arts grant administered by the Pittsburgh Foundation.

He has been honored to work with Dreams of Hope as mentoring artist, dramaturg and stage director for the last 5 years and considers his involvement with the company to be one of the highpoints of his theatrical endevours.

Ted is also very excited to be working now with Persad Center and helping to create and co-ordinate the new Community Safe Zone project, an initiative to combat hate crime and LGBT discrimination in Southwestern PA.  For more information about Persad and Community Safe Zone, please visit www.persadcenter.org