Billy Hartung’s danced and acted on stages and screens from Pittsburgh to Broadway and back. His career began at the Center for Theater Arts–a performing arts school he now runs. He’s still acting around town, and at home, he plays a lead role as a husband and father of six.
Our Look Who’s Here! host Erin Gannon is known for her dancing–on the bus, while walking to work, and anywhere else fun music is playing. She, too, started her performing career at the Center for Theater Arts.
So it was only natural these two would come together for our first Dashboard Jam episode of Look Who’s Here!
We reached out to Awesome Pittsburgh for funding. The central message of our pitch: People with disabilities often have the same human curiosity and joy in music and good conversation that connects us all, whether or not we identify as having a disability. The Awesome Pittsburgh folks said “Yes!” to our idea.
Our All-Abilities cast and crew and got to work. That crew includes Virtual Homey’s Matthew Torti on cameras and editing and ALVA Media’s Alex Collinger (a Joey Travolta Film Camp grad). We premiered the completed video on Jan. 30–a frigid day in our home base of Pittsburgh. We hoped it would warm our audience up!
We also have an audio-described version below for the visually impaired, or anyone who can benefit from an additional description.