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.
