Field Trips

Field Trips

City of Asylum/Northside

City of Asylum Pittsburgh provides sanctuary to literary writers exiled under threat of persecution. The organization has a series of rehabilitated houses on one particular street (Sampsonia Way) on Pittsburgh's Northside. Houses are used by writers-in-residence and are commissioned as public artwork that incorporates literary text on each façade. This process is called house-publishing and eventually Sampsonia Way will be transformed into a public library of published houses that can be read while walking down the street. This tour will explore City of Asylum's house publications, talking about not only the public art, but also the stories of the writers-in-residence and the history of the organization. Tours will conclude at City of Asylum's literary arts venue.

Penn Avenue Arts District

Join us for a stroll through the Penn Avenue Arts and Commercial District! Bordering the vibrant, diverse neighborhoods of Friendship, Bloomfield, and Garfield, the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, established in 1998, is a prime example of the arts revitalizing a business district. The area is home to Unblurred: First Fridays on Penn, a monthly cultural happening. Arts institutions in the area include The Pittsburgh Glass Center, VaultArt Studio, BOOM Concepts, and Silver Eye Center for Photography. Walking about a mile, the tour will stop at various independent galleries and murals in the area and culminate with several local lunch options.

Downtown to Point State Park Environmental Walk

Let's get outside and walk by the rivers! Join a walk to Point State Park with special cultural storytelling by Miguel Sague Jr. (Taino) of the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center. Attendees will learn about climate justice organizing in Pittsburgh and talk about how theatre workers can get involved. 

August Wilson House

Born in 1945, the great playwright spent his first 13 years at 1727 Bedford with his mother and five siblings, crammed into two rooms (later four). However cramped, these small rooms, this house and its yard all pulsed with life. There, August grew up inquisitive, loyal and an incessant reader, to become a Black Nationalist, then poet and playwright. The life nurtured at 1727 Bedford became the passionate heart of his unprecedented American Century Cycle of 10 plays, an epic dramatization of African-American life through a century of comedy and tragedy, aspiration and despair — or as he put it, “love, honor, duty, betrayal.” Join August Wilson historian and friend to the late playwright, Christopher Rawson, on a mobile tour of the Hill District and the newly opened August Wilson House as memorial to this great artist, and a significant new community space for Pittsburgh.