Happy 21st, New Works!

It’s that time of the year again.

Students have returned to their classrooms, the Texts From Last Night postings have been kicked up a notch, and the Pittsburgh New Works Festival is underway!  I’m excited to have the honor to take part in the festival once again after having so much fun last year.   This marks the festival’s 21st year, so I’m particularly excited by the idea that maybe now it’ll stop asking me to buy it booze.  I’ll be performing with the Baldwin Players in the 3rd week (September 22nd-25th) in “The Horse We Rode in On” by local playwright Barbara Miller.  It’s a show about family, togetherness, family togetherness and family-doesn’t-necessarily-want-to-be-together-ness.   I’m onstage again with Sara Fisher (we were paired up last season in Pete Barry’s “Sex with a Mathematician”) but the dynamic between our characters this year is much different.  Overall, I’m very excited for the show and for the festival as a whole.  In fact, I’m about to head there tonight to catch week #1′s performances.

If you are reading this, there’s also a possibility that you decided to visit because of an ad on page 7 of the New Works program.  If that is the case – welcome, I say to you.   Also “Hi.”  While I have a great time performing with local theater groups, my professional background is in advertising.  I even have a fancy degree in it from Point Park University.   Best of all?  I’m using that degree — in a real live advertising agency.   (A novel idea, right?)

It hasn’t always been rainbows and gumdrops though.  In fact, after graduation it was more like “TVs and Extended Warranties” for a while.   After that though, I landed my first gig at MARC USA and it’s been like an episode of Mad Men ever since….

But why the ad?  I just decided to put it out there.  By no means am I looking to try to make freelance graphic design my job;  I just really dig it and like picking up projects here and there to help out friends.  Here’s where the sales pitch comes in:

If you are a community organization, arts group or even an individual who’s thinking about developing a “brand identity” or wants me to Photoshop something funny onto something else, drop me a line here.

If you are an organization that wants something more… like… a TV commercial produced, implementing a Search Engine Marketing campaign, a complex media strategy or really just want to talk about how to take your business to the next step, drop me a line here.

The second “Here” is for my work email address at BAM Advertising.  We’re a small agency located out in Pittsburgh’s South Hills and we were founded 7 years ago by Bill Berry.  Our client roster includes Pittsburgh East & West Hills Nissan (yup – the 9020 Guys!), TGI Friday’s, Culligan Water International and a variety of other project-based accounts.  We’d love to hear from you regarding projects big and small.

That’s the long and short of it.  Feel free to look around the other pages of BeardAndBlazer.com for more of my “story”, my resumes (both professional and theatrical) and other random ramblings that you might find along the way.   If you got here from the New Works Festival program, I sincerely hope you enjoyed the show – and I thank you for supporting the arts.   If you got here because you’re just a cool person who is a friend of mine of Facebook or Twitter… well then, keep on keepin’ on.

Until next time.

Cheers,
- Andy