This study reveals a largely unchronicled history of Pittsburgh's two centuries of theatrical entertainments. Conner begins by imagining a night in 1818 when the city's inhabitants crowded into one of Pittsburgh's first playhouses, conjuring the sense of anticipation and trepidation that gripped the audience, and offering contemporary readers insight into what was at stake for communities struggling to assert their cultural status outside the dominant east-coast urban centers. Her readership ranges beyond the field of theatre historians to a more general audience of scholars. Drawing on a wide array of sources, she weaves in information on Pittsburgh's industrial history, its geography, and even its battles with pollution. Ten chapters, on topics such as ‘Theatre as Destination’, ‘Theatre as Social Change’, or ‘Theatre as Civic Identities’, trace the development of the city's economic, social and political life in conjunction with its theatrical entertainments.

For example, the section on ‘Theatre as Big Business’ illuminates the ways in which Pittsburgh's economic expansion overlapped with the development of the theatrical Syndicate, the expansion of the city's amateur theatricals, and the growth of a reputable host of Pittsburgh theatre critics (including Willa Cather), until, by the 1920s, ‘Pittsburgh was developing a reputation as the “city of theatres”’ (p. 91). ‘Theatre as Regional Renaissance’ then examines how the community coped with its post-war malaise, when the city faced massive layoffs and labour strikes, and when many of its lavish downtown playhouses had fallen into disrepair. As the author suggests, ‘critical to this . . . renaissance was a strategic plan to use the arts to dispel . . . the lingering conception of Pittsburgh as a mill town . . ., a task that fell largely to private groups, rather than public or government organizations’ (p. 139). Conner describes grassroots organizations such as the Curtaineers, an interracial troupe founded in the 1940s ‘to advance “the cause of democratic understanding”’ (p. 142).

She terminates her history in 1989, at the ‘decisive end of Pittsburgh's industrial-era prowess’, but concludes with some observations on the city's culture in the new millennium (p. 211). Describing a ‘change in the arts ecosystem’, she points to new entrepreneurial spirit, combined with ‘increased activity among resident theatres and commercial houses’ (p. 220) that has produced not only an enhanced artistic profile for the city, but also an organic cultural voice that the citizens have embraced as something uniquely their own, marking a substantial journey from Pittsburgh's days as a frontier town, struggling for a sense of local and cultural identity.