From Neighborhood Church to Creative Production Powerhouse: How THIS IS RED Showed a Couple of Circus Artists What a Reinvented Space Can Do
If creative spaces were dishes, THIS IS RED would be jambalaya. Each of its components is delectable on its own. But when you take in its entirety, the experience is sharp and sublime.
Situated in Pittsburgh’s Munhall neighborhood, just across the park from the Carnegie Library and Music Hall of Homestead, is the former Saint Michael’s, an old Slovakian church which officially closed in 2009. Since 2016, it has been home to THIS IS RED’s advertising agency and multilevel event space. You gotta love how Yinzers repurpose old churches.
As circus artists, Lindsey Briant and I gravitate toward spaces with dimension. High ceilings, expansive floors, and a bewitching combination of color and light that makes a cirque jag say “We need to put on some kind of show here.” And after seeing multiple shows and parties happen within THIS IS RED over the years, we were hungry to incorporate it into our short film, Boléro Challenge.
What Is THIS IS RED?
OMG! You have a cool thing!
You know that feeling. When you walk into someone’s home or business and there’s that cool thing signaling that the time you spend here will be unusually enjoyable.
OMG! You have a Bartesian!
OMG! You have a Metallica pinball machine!
OMG! You have free, untimed parking! (That’s a big one for the Yinzers).
A tour through THIS IS RED strings these moments together in mindblowing abundance. Here are just a few of the “cool things” casually tucked into the walls of the old church:
an intimate Dolby movie theater
a whiskey bar fashioned from remnants of the church's marble altar
a guitar humidor
a “grotto” complete with the original stone shrine, now home to more contemporary idols (i.e., The Child from The Mandalorian)
Wandering around this domain of cool things, one may forget that this place is a global advertising & production agency during the day. With work ranging from brand campaigns to documentaries for clients like Dolby, Mercedes, and local cultural staple Manchester Bidwell Corporation, THIS IS RED is a creative storyteller’s creative storyteller.
And they know how to throw a hell of a party.
One Building. Massive Possibilities.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience THIS IS RED’s event capabilities in several configurations. And the events involving the sanctuary are especially cool. With its vast floor and towering ceiling, the space is home to a different kind of ritual nowadays. Just as spiritual, but much more raucous.
My favorite from across the years is their annual In Dead By Ten Halloween party. The hallowed halls transform into dance floors with DJ’s and bars with signature cocktails. And the congregation is devoted to fun.
It’s quite a Pittsburgh thing: celebrating in a space with the heritage of a church forged by immigrant ancestors…while dancing next to costumed nerds. Best Halloween party ever.
The sanctuary is a killer venue for live music as well. Where organ music once soared, the riffs of shredding guitars make the rafters rumble. This is where I saw a live performance by Stick Men, led by Peter Gabriel’s unicorn bassist, Tony Levin. It was a union of blood-red humanity and musical virtuosity in a space designed for a community to connect with something greater than itself. The tradition continues…
With digital production as one of its core offerings, THIS IS RED is a friend to the filmmaking community. It’s no surprise, then, that I once attended a 48 Hour Film Project kickoff in the sanctuary, as well as a Women in Film & Media networking event.
Same room. Four very different experiences. In each situation, you very well may catch Jeff Myers, THIS IS RED’s principal creative director, moving about the space capturing video on his handheld gimbal camera. There it is again: Media produced as art and repurposed for marketing.
The space breathes production. Its team produces live events and media with a distinct point of view. They avoided a very prominent pigeon hole by operating as a creative production business. Not just an advertising business.
And when you produce something interesting enough to document, the experience doesn’t have to stop producing value when everybody goes home.
Creative Networks Are Built Through Relationships
A church is built to bring people together. THIS IS RED has a way of bringing people together that’s difficult to quantify on its floor plans. And not just through concerts and dance parties.
I’ve written before about how creative collaborations often begin from trusting relationships. But those relationships can emerge in different ways. Meghan Greenwood and her BaM Choreography studio became an important part of Boléro Challenge six years after she and I met at a gig we had together.
My relationship with THIS IS RED, however, grew from me wanting a gig with them.
By December 2023, I had already attended In Dead By Ten and the 48 Hour Film Project kickoff there. Eventually, my fascination for the place turned into curiosity about the business behind it. I looked up the advertising side and wondered if they might need a freelance content strategist and producer. Namely me.
So how do a church turned production powerhouse and a content strategist / circus artist end up on the same email thread? Fake pizza.
How I Sent THIS IS RED a Pizza Without Sending Them a Pizza
If you fill out a career interest form on THIS IS RED’s website, you get the usual, encouraging language: “If you want to know more about working with us, reach out with this form.”
But there’s a surprise second option: “Or send us a pizza.”
The type of candidate you attract to your job opportunities relies a lot on the language and tone you use in writing the job description. So when I read, “Or send us a pizza,” I got it. I don’t know about you, but if given the choice between reading an inquiry form and enjoying a free pizza, I’d prefer the pizza.
But I knew this wasn’t really about pizza. It was about seeing who had the audacity to read everything on the page and respond with sophistication and humor. That’s the kind of person you want in a creative production environment. And I was up for the challenge.
Sending an actual pizza seemed like overkill. Besides, people may have allergies or dietary restrictions that I don’t know about. Or the team may not be in the office when a mysterious pizza arrives, so it gets cold. Real pizza brings too many risks.
Good thing I can do some creative stuff with art supplies. So I made them “a pizza.”
I cut the thing out of foam sheets, glued it, decorated it, and mailed it as a Christmas package. I included a letter explaining that my particular variety of pizza came from the stuff of my craft closet and therefore had “ridiculous yet practical uses.”
I gave them eight.
Attach a barrette to the back of it and stick it in your hair.
Slide it between the rows of keys on your keyboard because…why not?
Put a pin in it and wear it as a boutonnière or pocket square.
Put a hook in it and hang it on your Christmas tree.
Tack it to a cork board next to your souvenir concert tickets.
Attach a magnet to the back of it and stick it on your refrigerator.
Use it as a bookmark (bonus points for putting it in a book about pizza).
Feed it to your favorite doll, figurine, or stuffed animal.
And, because I am apparently incapable of sending someone a piece of craft foam without developing a content strategy for it, I pointed out that the eight suggested uses gave them at least eight days of Instagram-able snapshots.
When the pizza arrived, THIS IS RED photographed it and put it in their Instagram Story:
“This is how the best people apply for a job.”
Underneath, they thanked me for the “crafty creative pizza,” with an f-bomb thrown in for emphasis.
The letter didn't produce a part-time gig at that time merely because it couldn’t. Sometimes, that’s how it goes. But I did land a memorable interaction with people working inside a creative network that held my genuine interest.
This shows how much networking matters when creating creative opportunities.
Networking is often presented like an exchange. I need access to something, so I need to meet someone who has it. But creative networks work better when the relationship precedes the ask. Show up. Pay attention. Be interested in what other people are making. Mail them a fake pizza if that makes sense.
Someday, you may realize that their doors open when you need to tell your next wild story.
Why We Filmed Boléro Challenge at THIS IS RED
The defining musical characteristic of Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” is how it builds. It starts as a whisper and ends as a full, blaring orchestra. To emulate that sonic growth on film, we wanted to increase the scale of the settings as the film progressed.
THIS IS RED has the kind of vertical scale to fit that crescendo. And I just needed to hear a drum echo through that towering church of rock.
Sound was only part of what it gave us.
When Architecture Becomes Part of the Art
Our first day of filming took place in the sanctuary of THIS IS RED. That timing did something important for our confidence.
Lindsey was handling the camera most of the time, floating throughout the space from the floor to the choir loft. The art nouveau architecture in grey October daylight and studded with the warm glow of LED candles across the floor created a tone that was eerie yet gentle. The imagery also became a coincidental nod to the Phantom of the Opera allusions already running through the film.
When we paused to check the footage, Lindsey said “I can’t believe how good this looks.” It’s as if these walls were, once again, witnessing a benediction. Artistry went from an idea to an embodied act of devotion. The spirit moved through music, and we were the blessed.
It was, indeed, a sacred thing.
How Creative Spaces Generate Economic Value
Creative spaces, especially large ones like THIS IS RED, are meant to matter in more than one way. Thus, they are inherently practical.
Consider what I’ve personally watched this single building accommodate:
an advertising agency
concerts
large social events
professional networking
independent film production
This isn't a comprehensive list of everything THIS IS RED does. It's simply what one person has encountered there.
Each activity draws a different combination of people into the same physical asset. When something can support multiple kinds of value without needing to become something different every time, economic health is possible.
It’s a lot like circus art. It either goes with nothing, or it goes with everything depending on how you look at it.
Yes, it can provide entertainment in environments from the big top to a bar mitzvah.
And it’s a physical fitness regimen. Instead of going to the gym, you go to the studio. Instead of working a weight machine, you work on an aerial apparatus or something else that builds coordination, balance, strength, flexibility, or, at the very least, body awareness.
And it's a learning pathway through multiple intelligences. The Starry Messenger, Cirque Jag Production’s educational outreach initiative, is a prime example of that. By communicating astronomy concepts through balancing, juggling, and acrobatics, this program offers elementary students a new way of accessing and understanding science through the language of a performance art.
And it’s an exercise in community building. Circus is meant to humble you if you’re an audience member and especially if you’re a practitioner. No matter who you are, where you’re from, or what your story is, you agree to participate in a challenge of human potential. That will inevitably draw different lived experiences together into what circus is at its best: an expanded perspective.
Circus goes with everything, and we were happy to film it in a space that supports so much diverse, stimulating activity. Because when people elevate their perception of human potential, they’re more likely to engage with their environment in new ways. That’s good economics.
What Else Could Happen Here? Let’s Challenge Human Potential.
Pittsburghers have a legacy of challenging human potential and reimagining environments. So what creative possibilities exist for your space in The Iron City?
Whether it involves putting circus, music, and filmmaking into a blender or simply strategizing how you can pull the most value from one asset, a collaborative conversation is a fertile place to start.
So contact Cirque Jag Productions. It’s built for those conversations with small businesses, creatives, community organizations, and cultural institutions. We make the multidisciplinary art smoothies with a side of content marketing strategy so you too can show the world what it means to be Pretty & Gritty in The Iron City.
What else could happen here? We’ll never know unless we connect first.
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