Goodwin Theater is a 315-seat venue designed for plays, concerts, and lectures, constructed as part of the Austin Arts Center in 1964. James L. Goodwin, Hon. '63 was the donor of a significant $500,000 challenge gift to support the theater, and the venue was dedicated in his name on May 15, 1965. Since then, the theater has continued to be a lively performance space where student and local talent have been showcased, as well as a venue for a variety of lecture series, visiting poet readings, and academic panels.
Among the first student productions held in the Goodwin Theater were the Jesters’ performance of the musical comedy The Fantasticks in late April 1965, and a debut concert the following fall by the Trinity College Orchestra. The theater continued to be the home of the Jesters, and took on even more performances when Trinity made Theater and Dance a formal major in 1969. In the 1970s, the Goodwin Theater’s performance repertoire was consistently avant garde. Among such productions were: Nancy Cole’s one-act play “Gertrude Stein’s Gertrude Stein” performed by the artist in 1974; Luigi Pirandello’s metatheatrical play “Six Characters in Search of an Author” performed by the Theater Department in 1977; and Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist antiplay “The Bald Soprano” performed by the Trinity Jesters in 1979.
In recent times, the Goodwin Theater has featured artists from Hartford and beyond, with special emphasis on works of experimental and politically engaged dramaturgy. In April 2025, the Theater and Dance Department put on a production of “Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play,” a post-apocalyptic play based on a single episode of “The Simpsons,” written by Anne Washburn with music by Michael Friedman. Hartbeat Ensemble, a Hartford based civic action theater group and Trinity’s 2025 resident theater company, performed at Goodwin Theater in October 2025. More than 700 tickets were sold in advance for their production of Talvin Wilks’ play “Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing,” a play that explores James Baldwin’s friendship with Lorraine Hansberry. Later that month, Hartford-based artist Laugh Sanchez’s “Where We Stand,” a one-man show exploring community, democracy, and accountability, had a nine-day run at the theater.
The Trinity Tripod, 2025-10-21.
The Trinity Tripod, 2025-04-15.
The Trinity Reporter, Winter 2025.
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century: A History (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, p. 244.
The Trinity Tripod, 1990-10-02.
The Trinity Tripod, 1990-03-13.
The Trinity Tripod, 1979-04-10.
The Trinity Tripod, 1977-09-20.
The Trinity Tripod, 1974-02-12.
The Trinity Tripod, 1965-04-27.