Joe Wilson Jr. & Curt Columbus: Combining Acting and Community

About this video

The Business Innovation Factory has been a tremendous partner with Trinity Repertory Company for more than a decade. Since the arrival of Artistic Director Curt Columbus in 2006, Trinity has hosted the BIF Summit as a part of our desire to engage with our community, as well as to be an innovation leader.

“It may seem unlikely that a theater where a 2000-year-old art form is practiced could be an innovative space. However, we believe that theater is a quintessential 21st-century form. Theater is live, it is local, it is immediate. It is constantly being made and remade, and thus, innovated. Most importantly, theater holds the mirror up to our nature as humans and therefore reflects the audience who comes to witness it. Trinity Rep is also home to one of the last, long-standing resident acting companies in America, with 16 members in the current company.

Our most senior company member has been working at Trinity for 43 seasons, and our most junior has been with us for one season. These artists are the core of the work that we do, not only on our stages but in our city and our state. They are artist/activists and artist/leaders, and Joe Wilson Jr is one of the most active community leaders in this company,” states Curt Columbus, Artistic Director.

Curt Columbus and Joe Wilson Jr. engage in a conversation at the BIF2017 Summit. This conversation is part of an ongoing dialogue at Trinity Repertory Company, a dialogue that began with their beautiful, yet controversial, production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! in the spring of 2016. In that production, Wilson played the role of Judd Fry, the outcast farmhand and traditional villain of the piece.