Artistic Director

Carol Bartlett, a choreographer who had been the Peabody Preparatory dance department's artistic director for 25 years, died of cancer Dec. 15 at her Rodgers Forge home. She was 67. "She was the backbone and inspirational leader of the Peabody Preparatory's dance department," said Carolee Stewart, the preparatory school's dean. "She was a beloved teacher. She also planned and was chief choreographer for its productions. " Born Carol Trotman in Colchester, Essex, England, she was trained in the tradition of the Royal Academy of Ballet as a child.

Irene Lewis -- a free-lance director whose long-standing association with Center Stage ranges from "Watch on the Rhine" a decade ago to last season's world premiere of "Miss Evers' Boys" -- has been named acting artistic director for the 1991-1992 season.The artistic director's position will become vacant in July when Stan Wojewodski Jr. assumes the dual roles of dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre.Reached at home in New York, the 48-year-old Ms. Lewis described her yearlong appointment as "the best of both worlds.

As Michael Stebbins prepared to embody 40 characters in a one-man show that begins tonight at Rep Stage, the director, Susan Kramer, called him "elastic" and "a putty man." That flexibility will come in handy in Stebbins' new full-time job, as well. As Rep Stage's new artistic director/producer, he will choose the season, oversee the staff, act as a producer and seek financial support, among other tasks. Stebbins, who turned 40 this week, was named to lead the professional theater company in residence at Howard Community College in November.

Irene Lewis doesn't like to leave audiences in the dark. Between scenes, that is. Other directors may use blackouts to change scenery, but not Lewis, the artistic director of Center Stage. "I think she looks at [a blackout] as an opportunity lost. What could be more boring than to have the audience sit there and look at their programs?" says sound designer Mark Bennett, a frequent collaborator at Center Stage. Over the years, Lewis has filled the space between scenes with elaborately staged transitions that feature everything from a strolling saxophone player in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to farmhands carrying livestock in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer.

For his first full season as Center Stage artistic director, Kwame Kwei-Armah focused on works that could spark conversation about a variety of heady issues. Midway through that season, he has unveiled a very different theme for the next one. "If this season is cerebral, with the join-the-conversation message, [2013-2014] is one of spirit and joy and fun, I'm hoping," Kwei-Armah said. "I have been traveling a lot and looking at productions across the country. I have seen audiences react to several of these plays, which gives me the security to present them.

As the head of Baltimore's most prominent regional theater, Center Stage artistic director Irene Lewis not only is intellectually fearless, but she also possesses a big heart. She is passionately committed to speaking up for the people in society who can't do it for themselves, and she has never once dumbed down a show to attract a mass audience. She has a shrewd eye for talent and a gift for inspiring deep loyalty in actors and members of her staff. And she has built an audience at Center Stage so racially diverse it's the envy of theaters nationwide.

As Michael Stebbins prepared to embody 40 characters in a one-man show that begins tonight at Rep Stage, the director, Susan Kramer, called him "elastic" and "a putty man." That flexibility will come in handy in Stebbins' new full-time job, as well. As Rep Stage's new artistic director/producer, he will choose the season, oversee the staff, act as a producer and seek financial support, among other tasks. Stebbins, who turned 40 Wednesday, was named to lead the professional theater company in residence at Howard Community College in November.

No one has ever accused Pinchas Zukerman of being a shrinking violet."I bring more than one thing to the table, and the possibilities can be presented in a number of different ways," Zukerman said by way of introducing himself to an invited audience last spring, when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced the famed musician's appointment as artistic director of Summer MusicFest, the BSO's summer season in Meyerhoff Hall."

The fifth-floor rehearsal hall at Baltimore's Center Stage is a room in which the raw materials used to build it are laid open to plain view. Pipes jut unapologetically from floor to ceiling. Where the workers seem to have run out of plaster, bricks are exposed. If you find the stark utilitarianism unsightly, well, the room seems to say, that is your problem. It is a room that believes in stripping away the finishes and getting back to basics. A room that implicitly honors hard work, false starts, lack of pretense and sore thumbs.

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.That must be one of the reasons the Washington Opera asked superstar tenor Placido Domingo two years ago to become its artistic director. When he accepted the job, Domingo -- whose first season begins Saturday at the Kennedy Center with a production of Carlos Gomes' long-forgotten "Il Guarany" -- added a fourth career to an already crowded resume.Domingo may be only the world's second most famous tenor, but he is certainly the busiest.