George Mendel
pe o pl e
Actors Tressa Glover and her husband, Don DiGiulio, founded No Name Players, a theatrical production company. The couple, both
from Western Pennsylvania, met while working in New York and spent a few years in Chicago before finding a house on Mabrick
Avenue. Acting on her Convictions
S ome people look their whole lives for their call-
ing. Tressa Glover, 33, found hers in first grade,
in after-school acting classes in Allison Park.

Those first steps into the theater world have
shaped her life.

“I think that the beauty of theater is that
every single night is different from every other
single night,” she says. Glover recently played in
the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Harry’s Friendly
Service, as Harry’s 20-year-old daughter, Emily.

Glover’s education and career took her to acting classes at Penn
State and work in New York and Chicago, but ultimately led her to
Mt. Lebanon in the fall of 2008 to act, direct, teach, produce and build
a life with Don DiGiulio, her husband and partner in their nonprofit
company, No Name Players, a company that crafts Pittsburgh the-
ater productions. DiGuilio, 28, started the company when he was a
student at Marshall University and included shows called “Big Love,”
“This Hotel” and “Wonder of the World.”
Working for their own company has a particular freedom that Glover
savors. “I’m always aware of how lucky I am to get to do something
that I love. It is overwhelming to sit here and say, ‘What do you want
to do?’ and the answer is, ‘Anything, anything!’”
“Working with Tressa is amazing,” DiGiulio, who grew up in McK-
ees Rocks, says of his wife. “I feel that as artists and professionals
we complement each other beautifully throughout every aspect of a
production… The theatrical profession is a tricky business. It helps to
love what you do, which we most certainly do! It’s an added bonus
46 mtl • november 2009
when it just so happens that you love the person with whom you are
embarking on that journey.”
Among some of the company’s recent work was a contribution
to Swan Day (Support Women Artists Now), a new concept, which
Glover says is celebrated around the world for women’s history
month in March. The show, performed in Pittsburgh, featured local
women who work in poetry, dance, music, short plays and visual
art. “(The show) was a celebration of women artists. It was such an
inspiration. The lovely thing about it was that all these artists got to
work together. As an actress, I don’t usually get to work with a poet,”
she says. The pair plan to make it an annual event.

The couple’s love story started on a Pittsburgh stage like a well-
written script. They met working on the play Meagher for Pittsburgh
Playwrights in 2004. Glover was living in New York at the time. “I
came back here to do a show and ended up staying a little longer,”
Glover says. “Someone asked me to fill in for two actresses who had
had to leave the show, and my husband ended up doing it as a favor
to someone as well.” In 2007, they were married on another stage at
the New Hazlett Theater by the priest who had married her parents,
under a set that DiGiulio and a friend created just for that day.

After a couple of years working the stages of Chicago’s theaters,
the couple moved back and has settled into a house on Mabrick
Avenue, balancing theater, family and helping with the family busi-
nesses, in a dizzying array that seems to make Glover smile every
time she thinks of it.

“Part of this business is a juggling act...When you are fortunate
enough to be working for Quantum Theatre or City Theatre or