OP-ED: Something good is happening right here at home
For generations, people in Washington County have driven north for dinner and a show.
I’d like Pittsburgh to start making the drive south.
Something is happening in Canonsburg.
As of Nov. 2, nearly 5,000 seats had already been booked or held for Little Lake Theatre Company’s “White Christmas” at the newly renovated Canon Theatre, a full month before opening. As of Nov. 1, Little Lake had booked more than 21,000 tickets across our 2026 season, more than we sold in all of 2022 and 2023 combined.
I’m proud of those numbers. Of course I am. I help run the theatre.
But I think the more interesting question is what happens around those numbers.
What happens when thousands of people come downtown, park their cars, eat dinner, buy a drink, walk into a shop and then take their seats for a show? What happens when someone from Pittsburgh says, “We’re going to Canonsburg Saturday night,” and everybody knows exactly why?
This December, you can walk Pike Street during Canonsburg’s Old Fashioned Christmas, buy something from the person who made it, have dinner at a locally owned restaurant and then walk into the Canon Theatre for *White Christmas*.
That is a pretty great night.
And it is not happening by accident.
People across our region are choosing to gather again. They are choosing live music, theatre, restaurants, festivals and places where they can actually be together. For communities like ours, that matters economically. But I think it matters in another way too.
It gives us permission to be ambitious.
This month at Little Lake, nine young women take the field in Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist about a girls soccer team growing up together. A few weeks later, a huge cast and orchestra will fill the Canon Theatre with Irving Berlin.
When our neighbors keep showing up, it gives me the nerve to put “The Wolves” on the same season as “White Christmas.”
That may be my favorite thing about what is happening here.
The audience that comes for a title it already loves is increasingly willing to come back for something it has never heard of. That trust lets artists take chances. It lets theatres introduce audiences to new writers. It lets young performers grow up believing they do not necessarily have to leave Western Pennsylvania to do meaningful work.
And Little Lake is hardly alone.
There is good work happening all around us, at South Park Theatre, the Old Schoolhouse Players, Washington Community Theatre, the Washington Symphony Orchestra, 19 North and in communities across Washington County, Greene County and beyond.
We should talk about that work like it belongs here.
Because we have a funny habit in this region of treating excellence as something that happens somewhere else. When something surprises us, we sometimes offer the compliment: “That was really good for around here.”
Drop the last four words.
If something moves you, say so. Learn the artist’s name. Tell somebody who missed it. Go back.
And this month, be the person who makes the plans.
Call the friend you keep meaning to see. Invite somebody from Pittsburgh to meet you in Canonsburg. Get dinner. Walk downtown. Buy the tickets to something you already love, or better yet, take a chance on something you know nothing about.
“I’ll get the tickets. You pick the restaurant.”
Then tell me what I should go see next.
I spend a good part of my life inviting people to come sit in our theatre.
I’d love a turn sitting beside you in somebody else’s.
Patrick Cannon is Artistic Director of Little Lake Theatre Company in Canonsburg.