‘Jimmy & Lorraine’

Cast members of HartBeat Ensemble’s acclaimed production of Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing rehearse for the six performances held in Austin Arts Center’s Goodwin Theater in October 2024. More than 700 tickets were booked in advance for playwright Talvin Wilks’s poetic and political play that focuses on the friendship between James Baldwin (played by Jon-Michael Reese) and Lorraine Hansberry (played by Vanessa R. Butler), two groundbreaking Black American writers and activists. The performances followed a two-week guest artist residency at Austin Arts Center, where HartBeat Ensemble’s creative team rehearsed on campus and shared its process with students and the wider community. HartBeat Ensemble’s artistic director, Godfrey L. Simmons Jr., is a visiting lecturer in theater and dance at Trinity.

Photo by Nick Caito