Dress in your finest and make like you're a Broadway VIP on Tony Awards night without leaving the Pittsburgh Cultural District.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust invites theater fans to "channel their inner celebrity" in a red-carpet event from 7 to 11 p.m. June 9 at the Cabaret at Theater Square, 655 Penn Ave., Downtown. While Broadway's stars gather at Radio City Music Hall for the Tonys that night, Pittsburgh party-goers can pose for “paparazzi” and mingle over cocktails and munchies while casting their votes for Tony winners and testing their knowledge of all things Broadway to win prizes.  The event supports the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Your $30 ticket includes dinner fare and two drink tickets, and may be purchased at 412-456-6666 or TrustArts.org,

Billy Porter as Lola in "Kinky Boots." Photo credit: Matthew Murphy

As you read the list of Tony Award nominees announced today and wonder why some names sound familiar, it could be you've seen them on Broadway or on tour, or you know them from a Pittsburgh neighborhood, like Billy Porter, or a local college, like Patina Miller. Or you may be have seen a Pittsburgh CLO show or two ...

Here's a list provided by Pittsburgh CLO of their alums who are among the nominees this season:

• Billy Porter – Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Kinky Boots. Pittsburgh CLO: 110 in the Shade, Dreamgirls, Former Mini Star and Pittsburgh CLO Academy student
• Stephanie Block – Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Pittsburgh CLO: Godspell, Fiddler on the Roof
• Carolee Carmello - Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: Scandalous. Pittsburgh CLO: Grease, Anything Goes
• Victoria Clark – Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Pittsburgh CLO: Bells Are Ringing, Hello Dolly, Guys and Dolls
• Andy Blankenbuehler – Best Choreography: Bring It On: The Musical. Pittsburgh CLO: Camelot; Evita; No, No Nanette; Bells Are Ringing
• Donald Holder - Best Lighting Design of a Play: Golden Boy, Pittsburgh CLO: Barry Manilow’s Copacabana
•  Jules Fisher – Best Lighting Design of a Play: Lucky Guy. Pittsburgh CLO: The Music Man, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Wonderful Town, Carousel, The Merry Widow
•  Albert Wolsky – Best Costume Design of a Play: The Heiress. Pittsburgh CLO: Kismet

In the Raw is under way with a reading of "Ganglia: Instructions for the Symbiogenesis" by Peter J. Roth, one of three writers whose new works were chosen for workshops and readings by Bricolage Theater Company’s expanded new-play festival. 

In "Ganglia," Norman and Amelia are the friendly new couple in the neighborhood, but they are harboring a secret — an alien parasite that is feeding off of their brains. They’ve come to unite humanity in one great protocol except for a slight hitch in their plans: Amelia is falling in love.

Local actors Tressa Glover, Patrick Jordan, Bria Walker and Mark Staley will be onstage for the play's second reading at 7 tonight at 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown.

Mr. Roth is a Cleveland native, will begin an MFA in Playwriting at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama this fall. His play “The Copper Anniversary” was given a staged reading by Theatre Daedalus as part of the Wild Goose Creative New Year’s Festival in Columbus, Ohio.

In the Raw continues through May 20. All performances are at 7 p.m. and are "give-what-you-can" at the door. Read more about In the Raw at post-gazette.com or bricolagepgh.org.

LONDON, Day 6 and last (Post-Gazette Critic’s Choice Theater Tour): The End of Empire. -- As I've said, this week’s theater might be gathered under the title End of Empire, and today’s show was conclusive: Alan Bennett’s modestly, slyly named “People” is that in spades. Frances de la Tour (left in the picture above) is the oldest of three sisters who has to decide what to do with the family’s glorious but decaying 16th century mansion in southern Yorkshire. Sell to the National Trust? Sell to a consortium of international zillionaires? Continue to molder? It’s a comedy, sometimes rather too baldly so for my taste, but it’s full of insights into class and money and gender and plenty more, as I’ll figure out when I sit down to think about it.

When I do, I’ll score “The Audience,” “Quartermaine’s Terms,” “Peter and Alice” and even “The Judas Kiss” in the End of Empire column. You could also count “Dear World” (world capitalism) and “The Captain from Kopenick” (monarchical Europe). Only “Great Expectations” (tonight’s show – Victorian melodrama) and “The Curious Incident…” don’t fit. Right now, however, it’s time to pack up the souvenirs and get ready to head out to the airport at the ungodly hour of 6 am. Next stop, Pittsburgh.