Squonk in the Neighborhood: June 2025

As part of Squonk in the Neighborhood, our teaching artists taught two workshops in the Pittsburgh area in June.

Kadey and Caroline visited Assemble to present “Go with the Flow! Exploring Flow Art and Performance with Squonk.” In this interactive workshops, kids learned how to use movement, rhythm, and props to create fun and mesmerizing performances.

Tony, Mia and Charlie offered a hands-on workshop at the August Wilson Cultural Center as part of Hip Hop Music Camp. They taught songwriting, beatmaking, and recording. The session ended with students performing their original songs accompanied by Squonk musicians.

Squonking Pittsburgh

Our summer tour continued with appearances in our hometown of Pittsburgh. We performed Brouhaha as part of the Millvale Bicycle Rally, presented by the Millvale Community Library.

Because of heavy rain, we weren't able to perform Brouhaha at Penn Hills Library for their Summer Reading Kick-Off Event. But after the rain stopped, we were able to quickly set up our big purple hands from Hand to Hand.

Brouhaha in Indiana and Arkansas

Our 2025 tour of Brouhaha continued with stops in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Jasper, Indiana. In Fayetteville, we performed as part of Artosphere’s Trail Mix, presented by the Walton Arts Center. In Indiana, we were part of Art in Jasper’s Chalk Walk, a family-friendly event exploring the world of art. It was our first time in Jasper, and we last visited Fayetteville in 2017.

Announcing Our 2025 Spring and Early Summer Tour

Announcing our spring and early summer tour dates! We’ll take Brouhaha to Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, and Connecticut, and also perform in our home state of Pennsylvania. We hope to see you at one of these shows!

Photo: Lemagie Productions

We're Hiring

Squonk is looking to hire a committed Touring Stage Technician/Performer. We have a full season ahead of us and are looking for someone to work gigs, June through October 2025, with possible long-term opportunities.

We are a Pittsburgh-based ensemble that The New York Times has called "a multimedia troupe of infinite jest with an imagination to match." Our current show, Brouhaha, is entering its second full season of touring. Squonk has performed across the U.S. and internationally, from Rhode Island to Texas, Lincoln Center to The Kennedy Center, China to Canada! To see photos and videos of Brouhaha, visit our show page.

We offer professional wages plus we cover all travel expenses, including per diem, hotel, and airfare. Average out-of-town runouts are 3-7 days. Additional work can include driving our 26-foot box truck, with a fellow Squonker, to our destinations.

This position is a cross between a technician and a performer/puppeteer.

You will need to be comfortable in front of an audience, as you may march in an opening parade with a giant spinning eye...

…play the giant bellows….

…invite the audience to join you…

And there's much to do backstage as well, like working the giant horns...

You can see all of the action in our videos on our Brouhaha page.

Having basic technical skills is a plus. Every crew member has responsibilities with loading and unloading the truck and building and tearing down the set. As you can imagine, the position takes a certain level of physical agility, strength, and fitness. The job is very high-energy and requires a lot of running around, and since all performances are outdoors, you must be comfortable working in the heat and humidity at times.

This person needs to be sharp enough to run their position and know their cues in the half-hour shows without a stage manager’s assistance.

Please reach out to Company Manager Caroline Babik at caroline@squonkopera.org with your resume and what interests you about this position and working with Squonk.

Squonk in the Neighborhood: Fall 2024

Through Squonk in the Neighborhood, we had a busy fall conducting workshops for kids in several Pittsburgh-area communities.

In September, our teaching artists Lindsay and Tony led a music-making workshop at Penn Hills Library, as part of RAD Days and our Squonk-In-The-Library series.

Back in October, we paid a return visit to our friends Assemble PGH in Garfield to take part in their Scary Science Learning Party. Our teaching artists Mia and Kadey helped kids transform broken crayon bits into spooky shapes.

In December, we returned to the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall and the Penn Hills Library with a new workshop where Mia and Lindsay taught the kids about Rube Goldberg machines. They learned how to harness the flow of energy, using everyday objects, to create quirky, complex contraptions with chain reactions.

Squonk is funded in part by: