For Pittsburgh artist Treasure Treasure, performance has always been a way of exploring the self.
A performing artist, comic, composer, filmmaker, and multi-instrumentalist with a career spanning more than thirty years, Treasure’s work moves fluidly across mediums from theater and music to film and visual storytelling.
In this episode of From Then to Now to When, Treasure reflects on her childhood as a working actor in New York City. While the city offered excitement and opportunity, it also meant navigating a demanding professional world while growing up as a trans kid without the language to fully understand what she was experiencing.
Those early feelings of confusion, frustration, and creative energy eventually became a driving force in her work. Her theatrical piece “Agnes Teaches Acting,” which premiered at The New Hazlett Theater, imagines an acting teacher who hijacks class time to stage her own one-woman performance, a story about ambition, fear, and the risks people take to pursue their dreams.
Treasure’s creative work extends well beyond the stage. Her debut EP HYPNEROTOMACHIA is currently available on all platforms and can be heard in rotation on 91.3 WYEP in Pittsburgh. Her short film exploring trans identity and school portraiture was recently exhibited at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center and received honorable mention in the 2nd Annual “Envisioning a Just Pittsburgh” Award, presented by the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Across every medium, Treasure’s work circles the same central impulse: transformation.
“I want to live. I want to explore. I want to learn. I want to grow,” she says. “There’s so much I want to create.”