Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Center Stage Theater Gets a Major Facelift

(left) Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, Center Stage Artistic Director (right) Gavin Witt,Center Stage Associate Director.
Center Stage
(left) Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, Center Stage Artistic Director (right) Gavin Witt,Center Stage Associate Director.

(left) Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, Center Stage Artistic Director (right) Gavin Witt,Center Stage Associate Director.
Credit Center Stage
(left) Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, Center Stage Artistic Director (right) Gavin Witt,Center Stage Associate Director.

Today, a conversation about Center Stage. Maryland’s State Theater is undergoing a major facelift. The first phase of the renovation has been on display since Thanksgiving weekend, when previews for their current show, Les Liaisons Dangereuses opened in a spruced-up Pearlstone Theater. Center Stage hopes to complete their renovations in the next few months.  How will the new space inform the programming at Center Stage and create opportunities for up-and-coming playwrights and actors?  Tom is joined by Center Stage Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, the theater’s Associate Director, Gavin Witt and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck. They’ll also discuss Center Stage’s new program “Wright Now, Play Later” that takes theater-making outside the building and into the community by bringing accomplished playwrights, patrons and performers together to turn an idea about a play into a spontaneous, lively performance executed in Baltimore’s local businesses and well-known public places. 

Have an idea for a play topic? You can suggest prompts for the playwrights on Twitter using #WNPL and the playwrights will have 24 hours to write their plays. On Wednesday you can vote for your favorites among those plays. 

This Thursday at 1pm you can catch this week's iteration of Wright Now, Play Later online and live at a location that will be announced later. This week's subject is "collections."For more information about voting, submitting a prompt or where you can catch the next performance click here.

On Mondays here on Midday, we read the names of those people who lost their lives to violence in Baltimore City in the previous week.   We stand in witness to their untimely deaths, and we remember their families and friends in their hour of grief.  A researcher named Ellen Worthing has been compiling a list of Baltimore homicide victims for the past 15 years.  We are indebted to her for the data she posts on her blog,”chams page.”  We also consult the Baltimore Sun’s list of homicides, which they have been compiling since 2007. 

As of today, ­­­­302 people have been the victims of a homicide in our city.  Hundreds more have been victims of non-fatal shootings.  Six people were homicide victims in Baltimore last week: Antonio Davis, 23; Howard Banks, 45; Thomas Carter, 42; Byron Bazemore, 41; Keith Ramsey, 32; and Tayvon Cokley, 23. 

Copyright 2016 WYPR - 88.1 FM

Host, Midday (M-F 12:00-1:00)
J. WynnRousuckhas been reviewing theater for WYPR's Midday (and previously, Maryland Morning) since 2007. Prior to that, she was the theater critic of The Baltimore Sun, where she reviewed more than 3,000 plays over the course of 23 years. Her feature coverage for The Sun included a comprehensive series chronicling the development of the Tony Award-winning musical, “Hairspray.” Judy got her start at The Cleveland Press and at Cleveland’s fine arts radio station,WCLV. Her broadcasting experience also includes a year as an on-air theater critic for Maryland Public Television.A member of the Artistic Advisory Committee of Young Audiences of Maryland, Judy is also a freelance teacher for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and the Hippodrome Foundation, Inc. (the Hippodrome’s non-profit partner, which focuses on education and outreach). She was a faculty member at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Critics Institute in Waterford, CT, for two decades; she is a former National Endowment for Humanities Journalism Fellow; and she was a visiting student at Brown University (2007-2008), under the mentorship of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Paula Vogel. Judy and her husband, Alan Fink, share their home with two dogs, who enjoy hearing their “Master’s Voice” on WYPR.
More from Delaware Public Media