I don't believe the best idea wins. I believe the room wins.

Theater only works when everyone has a voice, when collaboration isn't a courtesy but the essential condition of creation.

The hierarchy I'm interested in is temporal, not interpersonal: the supremacy of this moment, right now, over all others.

If Tarkovsky sculpted in time, I sculpt in the present. The past and future matter only insofar as they illuminate where we stand—here, in this room, in this rehearsal, in this breath between impulse and action.

I make theater with the radical proposition that right now is the most important moment there has ever been. Not tomorrow's opening. Not yesterday's vision. Now.

This means not waiting.

Not asking permission.

It means returning to an older aesthetics and ethics of art-making, one that begins with a simple, urgent declaration: I have something I have to say.

Not because I'm special, but because the present moment demands it.

Because silence is also a choice, and I choose otherwise.

The work happens in the room.

The work happens with everyone.

The work happens now.

PRIA DAHIYA is a multidisciplinary artist and arts leader whose practice centers on multimedia storytelling at the intersection of performance, projection design, video art, and critical writing. Drawing from interdisciplinary training and tech-forward methodologies, Dahiya creates work that interrogates the liminal space between IRL and URL, investigating how the performed self diverges from—or perhaps constructs—the authentic self.

Informed by experiences navigating bisexual and biracial identities, Dahiya's work examines how individuals strategically perform or obfuscate identity within surveilled digital landscapes. As a digital native raised with ubiquitous internet access, Dahiya probes urgent questions: What does it mean to construct selfhood in the age of constant documentation? Why does art matter when capitalism has subsumed it entirely into commerce and spectacle?

Her work employs deliberate juxtapositions of high and low technology, privileging movement, sound, color, and image over linguistic text. When text does appear, it functions as both medium and critique—exploded, fragmented, weaponized against its own claims to authority and power

My Sister’s Lipstick (January 2025) By Anna King Skeels Director Contracted by New Hazlett Theatre Pittsburgh, PA

Suite Life A Celebration of Gene Kelly and Billy Strayhorn Director and Media Design Contracted by Kelly Strayhorn Theatre Pittsburgh, PA

Earth Angel Adapted from Madeline Cash Director and Production Manager New Product Company (Self-Produced) Pittsburgh, PA

Love and Money By Dennis Kelly Director John Wells Studio, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA

Dying Like Gods By Rowan Dunlop Director, Media Design and Performer Workshop Production via FRFF Grant (Self-Produced) Pittsburgh, PA

You and Me and the End of the World Devised Scripted Work Director and Deviser Freshworks Artist-In-Residence KST Alloy Studios, Pittsburgh PA

Anything Good Makes Me Want to Die Adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh Director, Media Design, and Adaptation New Product Company (Self-Produced) Pittsburgh, PA

Get Innocuous! Adapted from Coupland, Obrist, and Basar Director and Choreographer Carnegie Mellon Dance/Light Festival Pittsburgh, PA

Iphis and Ianthe Adapted from Ovid and Ali Smith Director and Adaptation The Ellis Gallery (Self-Produced) Pittsburgh, PA

Poem of the End Adapted from Marina Tsvetaeva Director and Adaptation The Frame Gallery (Self-Produced) Pittsburgh, PA

Macbeth By William Shakespeare Co-Director (with Emma Cordray) Braving The Bard, Radio Show Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher

The Bald Soprano By Eugene Ionesco Director Scotch n’ Soda Theatre Pittsburgh, PA

Last Week’s Late Nights Live! By Pria Dahiya Director and Playwright Playground Theatre Festival Pittsburgh, PA