The Austin Arts Center (AAC) is a vital learning, making, and convening space dedicated to fostering dynamic engagement with arts and ideas across and beyond Trinity’s campus communities and the Greater Hartford area. In all its functions, from professional productions and community-building initiatives to curricular engagements, the AAC strives to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment in which our imaginations are activated, vital conversations are nurtured, and new perspectives are possible.
Since its dedication in 1965, AAC has hosted a rich array of transformational artists and thinkers from near and far and has engaged students in creative, production, and administrative processes at every level. Named for Arthur Everett “Chick” Austin, Jr. (founder of the Trinity College Department of Fine Arts and the nationally recognized former director of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 to 1945), the AAC serves as an artistic home to Trinity College’s Departments of Theater and Dance, Music, and Studio Arts. The AAC houses key campus venues (Goodwin Theater, Garmany Hall, Widener Gallery, and Gruss Music Hall) and programs arts events in sites across campus and in collaboration with partner organizations.
As a community at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, we acknowledge that we are on the unceded land called Suckiaug, or Black Earth, central to the lives of certain Indigenous peoples. The Connecticut River Valley has been home to Native people for millennia. Trinity College acknowledges the impact of marginalization on the Wangunk, Mahican, Nehantic, Nipmuck, Pequonock, Podunk, Tunxis, and Wappinger peoples, as well as other impacted groups. The Trinity community also honors the sovereignty of our neighbors, the Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan, Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill Paugussett, and Schaghticoke nations. We commit to continue partnering with the Indigenous communities of Hartford and from across the state.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd, a diverse group of teens creates a new religion around their martyr. As they try to come up with the last verse of the final chapter of their sacred text (Floydians 9:29), division, shifting alliances, and the deeply personal threaten the group’s cohesion, testing their faith in the possibility of a just society and a hopeful future. This one-act play, written for teenage performers, is a meditation on martyrdom and the pursuit of justice.
Support our young artists by attending this FREE event!
Presented with support from North Hartford Ascend.
HartBeat Ensemble’s Youth Play Institute (YPI), now in its 15th year, is a paid internship program in acting, playwriting, theater design, or stage management for young adults between the ages of 16 and 21; a program where youth are developing and expressing their perspectives about social justice and engaging in their lives through a political lens. HBE is currently the Resident Theater Company at Trinity College in partnership with the Austin Arts Center.
a:12:{s:10:"aria-label";s:0:"";s:4:"type";s:4:"text";s:12:"instructions";s:0:"";s:8:"required";i:1;s:17:"conditional_logic";i:0;s:7:"wrapper";a:3:{s:5:"width";s:0:"";s:5:"class";s:0:"";s:2:"id";s:0:"";}s:13:"default_value";s:0:"";s:9:"maxlength";s:0:"";s:17:"allow_in_bindings";i:0;s:11:"placeholder";s:0:"";s:7:"prepend";s:0:"";s:6:"append";s:0:"";} ...
