Center Stage announced this week its 2012-2013. It’s the first season for Kwame Kwei-Armah, the theater’s new artistic director, and it’s Center Stage’s 50th Anniversary Season.
The theater aims to be a focal point for art as a catalyst for debate. “We hope that when you leave a show, whether you have loved it or not, you will have been exposed to an idea, an emotion, or an experience that will stay with you long after you have left the auditorium,” it reads on the Center Stage website.
A special treat? One of the plays on the schedule is written by Kwei-Armah, who talks about the season in the video above.
See the schedule at the jump.
An Enemy of the People
By Henrik Ibsen
Adapted by Arthur Miller
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Sep 19–Oct 21
American icon Arthur Miller (The Price) takes on Ibsen’s classic conundrum, pitting brother against brother and a community against itself. Just in time for election season comes this riveting saga that asks, does the good of some outweigh the good of the rest?
The Completely Fictional—Utterly True—Final Strange Tale of
Edgar Allan Poe
By Stephen Thorne
For Trinity Repertory Company
Directed by Curt Columbus
Oct 17 – Nov 25
Hometown favorite Bruce Nelson stars in this tale of the morbid life and mysterious final days of Baltimore’s treasured emblem of oddness, E.A. Poe. By turns a madcap vaudeville and a touching examination of artistic aspiration, this new script playfully and poignantly adds up the sum of a life lived.
TBA
The Mountaintop
By Katori Hall
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Jan 9 – Feb 24
The Lorraine Hotel. April, 1968. In room 306, Dr. King unwinds and prepares. A visit from a hotel maid offers welcome diversion and a challenging new perspective—but also raises profound and surprising questions. Already a worldwide sensation, recently hailed in a star-studded Broadway production, Katori Hall’s sensitive new play gets its first showing for Baltimore audiences.
Mud Blue Sky
World Premiere
By Marisa Wegrzyn
Directed by Susanna Gellert
Mar 6 – Apr 14
Work, motherhood, missed connections, and prom night form the backdrop for Marisa Wegrzyn’s tender, funny new play. In a nondescript hotel room near O’Hare Airport, three flight attendants and an unlikely fourth companion poise on the brink of looking back and moving ahead.
The Raisin Cycle (Playing in rotating repertory)
Clybourne Park
By Bruce Norris
Directed by Derrick Sanders
Apr 10 – Jun 9
The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama taking America by storm. Picking up where Lorraine Hansberry left off in her landmark Raisin in the Sun (2001-02 Season), The New York Times called Clybourne Park a “darkly humorous… dissection of race, gentrification and real estate.”
Beneatha’s Place
World Premiere
By Kwame Kwei-Armah
Directed by Derrick Sanders
May 8 – Jun 9
For his first drama set in America, Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah (Let There Be Love, Elmina’s Kitchen) offers his own response to Hansberry, continuing the conversation initiated in Clybourne Park.
Kwams! You go boy!