By Particular ReleaseBaltimore Heart Stage
altimore Heart Stage introduced right this moment that Tony Award-nominated and Obie Award profitable director Stevie Walker-Webb will be a part of the corporate as creative director. Walker-Webb will assume the function Oct. 1, 2023, succeeding Interim Inventive Director Ken-Matt Martin. He joins Adam Frank, BCS’s Managing Director, to kind the BCS management workforce.
“From the second I stepped into the foyer of Baltimore Heart Stage, I intuitively knew that I’d discovered a artistic residence,” stated Walker-Webb. “The wealthy historical past and simple coronary heart of this metropolis is unmatched. Baltimore has lengthy been a cultural beacon, and I’m excited to make use of my expertise and nationwide attain to amplify what makes Baltimore so particular.”
Walker-Webb continued: “This theater sits on the exact intersection of all of the issues that matter to me each as an artist and as a civically engaged citizen. I’m honored to be main an establishment that has over 60 years of confirmed dedication to its neighborhood and intend to deepen that dedication by working with the Baltimore Heart Stage workforce to carry solely essentially the most thrilling and cutting-edge artwork to our metropolis. This theatre belongs to all of us, and my plan is to program performs that can make Baltimore fall in love with reside efficiency time and again.”
“Stevie is a daring and considerate chief, who matches creative brilliance and delight with a historical past of putting artwork on the middle of the work to construct more healthy communities and a greater world,” stated Managing Director Adam Frank. “At this important juncture within the American theatre, his ardour, power and dedication to Baltimore make him an impressed alternative for a vibrant future for BCS. I can’t wait to work with him to understand a good looking new chapter for this wonderful firm.”
“Baltimore Heart Stage has an extended and storied historical past of daring and brave leaders, from Irene Lewis and Kwame Kwei-Armah, to Stephanie Ybarra and Ken-Matt Martin. We’re thrilled to cross the torch of management to Stevie Walker-Webb,” stated Sandy Liotta, Board President of BCS. “One in all Stevie’s celebrated productions at BCS was Our City, a narrative of neighborhood and life that Stevie staged as a compelling ode to town of Baltimore and all its folks. Stevie understands deeply the bond between the humanities and our metropolis, and along with his and Adam’s management, BCS will strengthen that fascinating bond for a few years to come back. It’s a nice day for Baltimore as we welcome Stevie again to our theater!”
Walker-Webb is a Tony Award nominated and Obie Award profitable director, playwright, cultural employee and educator. His work has been commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union and Nationwide Black Theater, and he has been produced on and off Broadway. Choose productions embrace Ain’t No Mo’ on Broadway and on the Public Theater, Gun & Powder at Paper Mill Playhouse, One In Two at The New Group, Black Odyssey at Basic Stage, and Fairview at Woolly Mammoth. For tv, he has written for the Emmy Award nominated hit comedy, The Ms. Pat Present, on BET.
Walker-Webb can also be the founding father of HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS, an arts and advocacy group that makes visible the struggling and inhumane therapy of incarcerated mentally ailing folks. He’s a recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre; The Lily Award, awarded by the Dramatists Guild of America; and was a 2050 Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. He’s an artist and lecturer at Harvard College and is the Founding Inventive Director of the Jubilee Theatre in Waco, Texas. He has created artwork and theatre everywhere in the world – in Madagascar, South Africa, Mexico, and throughout America.
“Baltimore Heart Stage has an extended and storied historical past of daring and brave leaders, from Irene Lewis and Kwame Kwei-Armah, to Stephanie Ybarra and Ken-Matt Martin. We’re thrilled to cross the torch of management to Stevie Walker-Webb.”
His productions at Baltimore Heart Stage embrace Thornton Wilder’s Our City, R. Eric Thomas’s The People At House, and, this previous season, Life Is A Dream, an adaptation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play by María Irene Fornés.
Baltimore Heart Stage’s 2023/24 season – which kicks off September 14th with Girl Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill – was programmed by former Inventive Director Stephanie Ybarra. Walker-Webb will lead this season whereas deepening his relationship with Baltimore and the BCS neighborhood and gaining a greater sense of the place the corporate matches inside the metropolis’s panorama, as he prepares to share his imaginative and prescient for the theatre commencing with the 2024/25 season.
“After I consider the way forward for BCS, I envision a theater the place we develop new works which can be commercially profitable in Baltimore, but additionally springboard to Broadway,” stated Walker-Webb. “I envision a theater for all ages and cultures, the place our applications and productions are stuffed to bursting. I envision a theater so profitable that we turn into the main regional theater within the nation. I really feel a deep calling to this metropolis and Baltimore Heart Stage, and I’m deeply proud to now name each residence. I can’t watch for what’s subsequent.”
BCS’s 2023/24 season begins this fall with Lanie Robertson’s Tony Award nominated play concerning the lifetime of Billie Vacation, Girl Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, directed by Nikkole Salter (Within the Continuum) and starring Baltimore native Tanea Renee. The season continues with the ArtsCentric manufacturing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (Enchanted Version), directed by Kevin McAllister (ArtsCentric Inventive Director).
The season continues in 2024 with a world premiere co-production with Mosaic Theater Firm of Mexodus, written and carried out by Brian Quijada (The place Did We Sit On The Bus) and Nygel D. Robinson (The Amen Nook), directed by David Mendizábal (Notes on Killing…), and Katori Corridor’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, The Sizzling Wing King, directed by Christopher D. Betts (Dreamgirls – The Paramount Theatre) and produced in affiliation with Hartford Stage. The season will finish with a brand new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Significance of Being Earnest, directed and tailored by Jenny Koons (Males on Boats at BCS).
Designated the State Theater of Maryland in 1978, Baltimore Heart Stage gives the very best high quality theater and programming for all members of our communities, together with youth and households. Baltimore Heart Stage ignites conversations and imaginations by producing an eclectic season {of professional} productions throughout two mainstages, by participating neighborhood applications, and with inspiring teaching programs. All the pieces we do at Baltimore Heart Stage is led by our core values—chief amongst them being entry for all. Our mission is closely rooted in offering lively and open accessibility for everybody, no matter any and all boundaries, to our mainstage performances, schooling initiatives, and neighborhood programming.
