Bold truth: a pioneering visionary is stepping back, reshaping Pittsburgh’s artistic landscape even as the stage she built continues to glow. But here’s where it gets controversial: can a theater company truly outlive its founder, or does its next chapter depend on a fresh voice? Karla Boos, the founder and artistic director of Quantum Theatre, announced she will retire next year, after 35 years and 106 productions that transformed Pittsburgh’s stage scene by taking performances to unexpected locations—empty warehouses, drained pools, city parks and more.
Boos will stay on as artistic director through December 2026, a transitional arrangement that keeps the company’s momentum intact. She says the timing feels right: Quantum is in excellent shape under executive director Julie DeSeyn, she will turn 65 next December, and she wants to explore new ventures beyond leading a theater company.
A Quantum spokesperson shared that the organization will begin seeking a new artistic director in January, with the goal of naming Boos’ successor in the summer. That timing aligns with a Boos-directed production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Carrie Blast Furnaces National Landmark and the continuation of Quantum’s 2026–2027 season under Boos’ programming.
A Fresh Vision for Pittsburgh
Boos grew up mostly in Wheeling, West Virginia, and is a University of Pittsburgh alum. She founded Quantum in 1990, after earning an MFA at the California Institute of the Arts, aiming to bring to Pittsburgh the kind of experimental theater she had experienced in Los Angeles.
Quantum’s inaugural production was a modest staging of Harold Pinter’s The Collection at The Artery, a Shadyside gallery and music venue that later became Soba. In its early years, the company produced one or two shows per season and hadn’t yet committed to its signature site-specific model. Many productions took place at the former Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
During her early years, Boos juggled a day job as development director at a private girls’ school in Wheeling while commuting to Pittsburgh for rehearsals. She welcomed her daughter in 1991. In 1994, she became development director at City Theatre, a role she held for several years until Quantum’s board encouraged her to commit full-time to the troupe.
By Quantum’s 1997 season, which featured a striking Shakespearean production of Antony & Cleopatra at the Brew House in South Side, the company had fully embraced creating a new performance space for most shows. By 2000, Quantum was producing three to four shows per season, a pace it maintains today.
Boos has consistently praised her creative teams—from video artist Joe Seamans to lighting designer C. Todd Brown and costume designer Narelle Sissons—acknowledging that artists bring extraordinary ideas to unconventional venues, even when those spaces are defunct.
Live Sheep on the Third Floor
Quantum’s repertoire spans classics from Boos’ favorites like Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard to contemporary experimental works such as Jennifer Chang’s The Devil is a Lie and Pittsburgh-based playwright Gab Cody’s Fat Beckett and Inside Passage. The company has also staged ambitious projects like a new musical about Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, The Current War, and a drama performed in the empty swimming pool of the Carnegie Library of Braddock (Therese Raquin). John Krizanc’s immersive Tamara led audiences through a choose-your-own-adventure experience at Rodef Shalom Congregation, including dinner during intermission.
Last month, Quantum unveiled one of its biggest hits to date: Lucy Prebble’s Enron, staged on an empty floor of Downtown Pittsburgh’s One Oxford Centre.
Boos’ personal favorites include her adaptation of Jose Saramago’s All the Names, an immersive production housed in the former Allegheny branch of the Carnegie Library, a three-floor, five-room experience with live sheep on the third floor that remains a career highlight. She also cherishes Idaspe, the North American premiere of a 300-year-old baroque opera, staged at the Byham Theater in a production conceived by the late Claire Van Kampen and featuring renowned mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux.
Idaspe, though unusual for Quantum, stands out as a pinnacle moment in Boos’ career and underscores the company’s willingness to experiment in traditional venues when it suits the work.
A Mature Platform for Change
Quantum is likely Pittsburgh’s oldest performing arts company still led by its founder, yet Boos believes the troupe will endure without her leadership. She notes that Pittsburgh has developed a strong appetite for environmental theater, a thread that will continue, even as new artistic leadership brings fresh influences and broader perspectives.
Boos envisions a future where the next artistic director brings different forms of experimentation while maintaining Quantum’s environmental ethos. She jokes that the next leader will likely be younger and more globally connected than she is, thanks to the advantages of age and exposure.
Yet she emphasizes that Quantum’s legacy is clear: it has demonstrated that a highly idiosyncratic vision can succeed and endure, even as leadership evolves and new voices rise to the fore. The question now is who will carry that torch forward, and how the company will continue to push audiences to reimagine performance in unconventional spaces—and whether its next era will redefine what “theater” can be in Pittsburgh and beyond.
