Trinity College Department of Music Presents: Bright Star

The Trinity College Department of Music presents Bright Star as the spring musical at Austin Arts Center’s Garmany Hall on the Trinity College campus, Thursday – Saturday, Mar. 5 – 7, 2020. Admission is free,  though tickets are required. For ticket reservations and additional information, please call the Austin Arts Center Box Office at (860) 297-2199. The Box Office is open Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. and Saturday, 1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Bright Star, written and composed by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, is a bluegrass musical set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Inspired by a true-life event, Bright Star is a tale of love and redemption in the American South of the 1920s and 1940s. The bluegrass score is fantastically beautiful, the script tremendously clever, and the story itself filed with mystery and suspense. Nina Pinchin, Associate Director of Education at Hartford Stage, will direct and Kevin Scott provides musical direction. The two have previously worked together at Trinity on Little Shop of Horrors, Edges, and Huddled Masses. Choreography is by Trinity senior Kristina Kurker ’20, lighting design by William Hughes ’22, and stage managing by Simi Schreiber ’23.

Pinchin shares, “Bright Star starts with a simple welcoming phrase ‘if you knew my story.’ The musical is at its core such an improbable good story–filled with heartbreak, laughter, and redemption. We started our rehearsal process this winter talking about the truly remarkable stories we are all carrying around: miracle births, insanely unlikely meetings of grandparents, sharp juxtapositions of where we’ve come from and where we are now, and the myriad of disparate characters that have inspired us to become who we are. It is amazing how much you can learn about a person, and people in general, by the way we tell our stories. Bright Star for sheer storytelling will not disappoint.”

The cast: Julianna Brown ’23, Ansel Burn ’20, Christopher Cooper ’23, Eliza Croarkin ’20, Julianne Freeman ’22, Deion Kelly ’23, Kristina Kurker ’20, Abigail Lambert ’23, Kya Lyons ’20, Brielle McDonald ’20, Elisabeth ‘Libby’ Perler ’23, Maciej Pradziad ’23, Nicole Saltzman ’22, Catherine Sweet ’22, and Samuel Taishoff ’22.

Students are also involved in the pit band: Nayantara Ghosh ’22 (guitar), Benjamin Liske ’20 (percussion), David Marottolo ’22 (Assistant Music Director/piano), Tyler Somerville ’21 (bass), Tulsi Sumukadas ’20 (fiddle).

-From a Press Release from the Austin Arts Center