DEMASKUS THEATER COLLECTIVE

Project Overview

Damascus Theater Collective creates theater centered on Black stories and experiences. Whitted Media became a trusted storytelling and production partner for the collective, helping preserve its theatrical work while expanding those stories through documentary filmmaking, photography, livestreaming, and promotional content.

The partnership included two major bodies of work: the complete filming and promotion of the theatrical production Our Song and the development of From Color to Black, a documentary series preserving the experiences and perspectives of Black Pittsburghers.

This was more than filming individual events. Whitted Media helped Damascus organize its stories, capture them professionally, and turn them into a collection of media that could continue reaching people after the live performances and conversations ended.

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Capturing Our Song

A live theatrical production happens once in front of an audience, but its story can live far beyond the stage when it is captured with care.

Whitted Media filmed Our Song in its entirety using four camera angles, creating coverage that preserved both the complete performance and the visual movement of the production. Our team managed the technical setup, video production, audio capture, audio engineering, filming, and post-production required to translate a live stage performance into a polished viewing experience.

The result was not simply a stationary recording from the back of the theater. The multi-camera approach allowed the finished production to include wide views of the stage alongside closer perspectives that captured individual performances, expressions, and important dramatic moments.

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Extending the Story Beyond the Stage

The complete theatrical recording was only one part of the project.

Whitted Media also created a promotional trailer for Our Song, transforming footage from the production into a focused piece designed to introduce the play and generate interest in its story. We also produced a mini-documentary connected to the production, giving Damascus another way to explore the ideas behind the work and engage audiences outside the traditional theatrical format.

Together, the full performance, trailer, and mini-documentary gave the collective several ways to present the same body of work: as a complete theatrical experience, as a short promotional introduction, and as a deeper documentary story.

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Preserving Black Pittsburgh Through From Color to Black

Damascus Theater Collective also partnered with Whitted Media to produce From Color to Black, a documentary series centered on the histories and lived experiences of Black people in Pittsburgh.

The series featured interviews with Black elders and community members whose stories offered insight into education, schools, medicine, arts and culture, community life, and other dimensions of the Black experience in the region. These conversations created space for people to share what they witnessed, what changed across generations, and what they believed needed to be remembered.

Whitted Media handled more than the filming. We scheduled interviews, contacted participants, coordinated the production process, prepared for each conversation, captured the interviews, engineered the audio, and shaped the material through post-production.

By managing both the relationships and the production, we helped turn a broad historical concept into an organized documentary series grounded in firsthand voices.

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Creating a Platform for Community Conversation

The work developed beyond the documentary episodes themselves. From Color to Black also became the foundation for a conversation series presented at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

Whitted Media created a trailer to introduce and promote the documentary series, along with promotional media supporting the public conversations. This allowed the stories to move from recorded interviews into a larger cultural setting where audiences could encounter and discuss the history being preserved.

The finished content gave Damascus Theater Collective visual material it could use to introduce the series, promote public programming, and demonstrate the depth of the stories behind the project.

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What Whitted Media Delivered

The partnership included:

• Pre-production planning and project coordination

• Participant outreach and interview scheduling

• Documentary story development

• Interview production

• Full theatrical performance filming

• Four-camera video coverage

• Production setup and technical management

• Professional audio capture and engineering

• Livestreaming

• Photography

• Documentary editing and post-production

• A complete edited recording of Our Song

• An Our Song promotional trailer

• An Our Song mini-documentary

• The From Color to Black documentary series

• A From Color to Black series trailer

• Promotional content for the conversation series at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center

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Why the Work Mattered

Black history is often carried through personal memories, family experiences, artistic expression, and stories passed between generations. Without intentional documentation, many of those perspectives can remain inaccessible or eventually disappear.

Through theatrical production and documentary storytelling, this partnership helped Damascus preserve two connected forms of cultural expression: Black stories interpreted onstage and Black history communicated directly by people who lived it.

The completed media created a record that could continue to be viewed, shared, promoted, and discussed beyond any single performance or event.

 

What This Project Demonstrates

This project demonstrates Whitted Media’s ability to manage a layered creative partnership involving live theater, documentary filmmaking, historical storytelling, community interviews, and promotional media.

We can enter a project during its earliest organizational stages, coordinate the people and production, capture the work through professional video and audio, and create multiple finished assets from the larger story.

For organizations that need more than a camera operator, this partnership shows what it means to have a strategic media team capable of handling the complete process—from the first phone call to the final film.