For more than 50 years, Center Stage has been home to some of Baltimore’s boldest performances, and now, in the midst of a $28-million makeover, the Calvert Street staple is promising some exciting performances ahead.
The company recently announced its 2016-2017 season, which will feature four mainstage productions and the unveiling of its yearlong renovation efforts. Center Stage has taken up a temporary residency at Towson University while the rehab, which began in January, is in progress.
Artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah says that the company kept the renovations in mind while planning its homecoming season, noting that transformation is a theme explored in many of the pieces themselves.
The season will kick off with Les Liaisons Dangereuses, an 18th-century French love story that will run Nov. 26-Dec. 23 in the first-floor Pearlstone Theatre while construction on the rest of the building is being finished.
Other performances scheduled to premiere later in 2017 will include Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake, an adaptation of a Chinese fable; Twisted Melodies, an homage to American soul musician Donny Hathaway; and a world premiere adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Jazz—a portrait of characters struggling during the Harlem Renaissance, which Kwei-Armah will direct.
“I don’t think that anyone can say anything original about the power and brilliance of Toni Morrison’s work, but what I can say is that the opportunity to actually work with a writer of her beauty to tell this deeply felt and complexed story on the stage is one that thrills me,” says Kwei-Armah, who also directed last year’s Marley, the company’s highest-grossing production to date. “It’s right for Baltimore and it’s right for who our audience is and what they respond to.”
In addition to the debut of the new shows, the upcoming season will reveal all of the building’s recent enhancements to the public for the first time.
Kwei-Armah mentions that the overhaul, expected to be complete by February 2017, will eventually yield a refurbished entry plaza, a reimagined first-floor lobby with a concierge box office and redesigned cafes, a new fourth-floor Head Theatre with a flexible seating plan, a 99-seat workshop space, and dedicated studios for the theatre’s education department.
The new season will also mark a homecoming for former managing director Michael Ross, who will return to the Center Stage team this summer after seven years working with Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse.
“What a time to be returning to a theater and city that has always meant so much to me,” Ross said in a press release. “The stunning new building is going to be an exciting, comfortable space to enjoy being a part of this new stage in Center Stage’s history.”
Although Center Stage will see plenty of changes in the coming months, Kwei-Armah is excited about what the future holds, noting that the spirit of the company will remain the same as the new space takes shape.
“The history has been looked after, we’ve just made the building more 21st-century,” he says. “I hope that audiences leave the season knowing that we’ve invested in the next 50 years, and that we’re not going to take them for granted.”