Interview conducted by Emma Riva
Making work about the absurdities of contemporary life is a challenge. It’s hard to do it without the result ending up as overly self-referential. Spencer Byham-Carson and Pria Dahiya take on the task of making theatre about contemporary moment in New Product Company, which is now on its fourth production, Whistleblowers.
In Whistleblowers, five employees at a fictional aerospace company are forced into a mandatory empathy course as part of a weeklong corporate leadership training. When a whistleblower scandal goes public mid-session, the exercises stop being hypothetical. What follows is darkly funny, politically sharp, and uncomfortably human. I asked Spencer Byham-Carson about some of the elements of the show in advance of its opening on May 28th.
Petrichor: What inspired the subject matter for the play?
Spencer Byham-Carson: Two things: First, I worked with an unnamed weapons manufacturer in an HR empathy course about 18 months ago. I experienced what can only be described as cognitive dissonance while explaining how to be “kind” to each other in the workplace, knowing full well that after the class, they would close their laptops and continue making weapons that kill people. At the same time, I became interested in the Boeing whistleblower John Barnett. I had seen many pieces of media that focused on the perspective of the whistleblower, and I was curious of their effect within the organization. What sorts of conversations do they inspire? How does the individual deal with the situation versus the organization? In the play, I decided to combine these two ideas, using the HR course as the backdrop and the whistleblower story as the main narrative drive.
What was the casting process like?
SBC: This was the most extensive casting process we’ve ever undertaken. During and shortly after my time at CMU, my casting pool consisted mostly of people I went to school with. For this show, we opened it up to the great wealth of talent we have here in Pittsburgh. The actors in Whistleblowers range from a recent Point Park University graduate, to an actor who moved to Pittsburgh from Louisiana within the past few months, to veterans of the Pittsburgh stage.
Are there any particular elements of the set design that stand out?
SBC: Similar to the casting process, this is the biggest set we’ve built for a New Product Company show. I would like to thank the people at Playbox Productions for lending us their flats to create the back wall of the set. When we received them, the previous owners had used the flats to create the Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. Our set team, Matthew Russell and Lillie Tuck, transformed those colorful walls into a stale boardroom, complete with the fictional missile company’s logo emblazoned on the wall.
Anytime a character is framed in the logo, the play feels right to me.
What do you think audience members will find surprising about this play?
SBC: If an audience member is familiar with New Product Company’s past work, I think they’ll be surprised by the relatively stripped-down media design in this show compared with our previous plays. Conversely, if this is an audience member’s first NPC play, they’re in for a truly unique experience unlike any other theater they’ve seen in Pittsburgh.
New Product Company is a Pittsburgh-based experimental theatre company founded in 2024 by Pria Dahiya and Spencer Byham-Carson, graduates of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s John Wells Directing Program. They create hybrid, media-driven performance work that explores the contradictions of contemporary life, online and off.
Performances are at Three Stories (937 Liberty Avenue) on Thursday, May 28 at 7:00pm, Friday, May 29 at 7:00pm, Saturday, May 30 at 2:00pm and 7:00pm. Tickets available here.
PETRICHOR 
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