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The Piedmont Performance Factory is not so much a building as an idea. It began as a search, with the brilliant architect Erin Sterling Lewis of o p e n studio, for a site in Pittsboro, North Carolina to become a new home for StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance, a professional theatre company, founded in Chicago in 1991, moved to North Carolina in 2000, currently based in Pittsboro, and for Harland’s Creek Productions, a film development company. We were thrilled to be working with Erin toward a vision of bringing more performance and arts to Chatham County.

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While the vision of a permanent, physical home has not materialized as yet, a lot has. Our recent seasons have seen amazing and critically-acclaimed new work from Jim Grimsley, Torry Bend, Howard L. Craft, Christine Evans, Sonny Kelly, and Kane Smego. 

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And we had our first full production in Pittsboro in the spring of 2022 at The Plant, an exciting new Chatham County venue for events and performances, plus multiple options for excellent local food and drink. 

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While things went a bit quiet when COVID made it impossible to gather in theaters, there was news about our work in The Indy wrap-up of the best in the arts for 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. Our production of Kane Smego's Temples of Lung and Air was on the list for 2018, Christine Evans's Closer Than They Appear was on the list for 2017, Howard L. Craft's Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green was on the list for 2015, and Torry Bend's If My Feet Have Lost the Ground was among the Best Shows of 2014. Manbites Dog's production of The Best of Enemies, directed by Joseph Megel, was also on the list. We may be itinerant but we continue to produce award-winning work.

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Freight -- the New York City edition -- resulted in great reviews, a New York Times Critics Pick, and was produced again in NYC in the fall of 2017 by the New Federal Theatre, again directed by Joseph Megel and starring J. Alphonse Nicholson, who has gone on to a brilliant film, television, and Broadway career. The team reunited again for a production at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles in 2023, which received five "scenies" in the wrap up of the season's theatre offerings, including The Year's Best Performance in a Play for J. Alphonse Nicholson.

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Please explore what we are up to here. We hope to see you at the theater very soon.

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Elisabeth Lewis Corley and Joseph Megel