Center Stage

Kwame Kwei-Armah is turning up the floodlights on Center Stage . It's been not quite two years since the British-born playwright became artistic director of Maryland's largest regional theater. With his production of two button-pushing dramas nicknamed "The Raisin Cycle," the beams emanating from 700 N. Calvert St. are strong enough to be spotted in distant places, from the Big Apple to the Badger State. Articles about the cycle, in which both plays run in repertoire and have the same casts, have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The multifaceted issue of race continues to cling to this country. Every sign of progress in relations seems to come with an opposite move, so that it often seems as if little has ever really, fundamentally changed since the age of Jim Crow, or even Reconstruction. There is much in this black-and-white vortex for playwrights to mine. I'm not sure if anyone will ever demonstrate that more movingly than Lorraine Hansberry did in 1957 with her incisive drama “A Raisin in the Sun,” but it sure is interesting to see what happens when others try. Two writers have taken “Raisin” as a starting point.

Kate Wilson and Laurence O'Dwyer are making fish faces at each other. MThey are seated at a small table in Center Stage's sixth floor rehearsal hall working on the word "call."Wilson, who is a dialect coach, advises more use of the lips. "Those are the vowels the Brits travel on," she says to O'Dwyer, an actor playing a British architect in Center Stage's production of George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession."This is serious work -- the kind of intense attention to craft that can make the difference between a good performance and a superb one. And though O'Dwyer is an award-winning actor and former drama professor, he not only welcomes his sessions with Wilson, he relishes them, frequently breaking into hearty laughter.

Katherine L. Vaughns, a University of Maryland School of Law professor and secretary of the Center Stage board who immersed herself in the arts community, died of pancreatic cancer May 4 at a Sinai Hospital hospice unit. The Bolton Hill resident was 68. "She was a great, great citizen of Baltimore," said Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival. "We dedicated the opening night of the Maryland Film Festival to her. She was the most perfect board member. She did more than you asked, often before you asked.

Board member Terry Morgenthaler was a standout at the Center Stage gala in a grrr-ly Dolce & Gabbana number. The 55-year-old Ruxton resident loves fashion but knows where she can push the envelope and where she can't. Her style? "Classic with an edge — that's what everybody says. ... I like to be chic, but appropriate for my age," the Friends School badminton coach said. The look : Tan and red two-tone leopard print chiffon Dolce & Gabbana sheath dress. Black satin peep-toe Jimmy Choo pumps with multi-color crystal flowers.

It's harder than ever to prove that beauty is only skin-deep, since so much skin is routinely nipped, tucked, exfoliated, moisturized and colorized, all at enormous expense, in the eternal quest for looking hot. But the message of self-acceptance espoused so nobly more than a century ago in Edmond Rostand's play about the nasally gifted Cyrano de Bergerac can still resonate today, if given half a chance. Resonate it does in "Cyrano," an adaptation of Rostand's original five acts currently getting a breezy treatment at Center Stage, part of the company's "Short Work" series, and presented in the Head Theater.

The actress and singer E. Faye Butler blazes away on stage like a human campfire. Audience members want to draw close, sit shoulder to shoulder in a ring around her and warm their hands. This is true when Butler is playing characters who are likable, such as the legendary blues singer Ella Fitzgerald, or as the African-American actress battling racial stereotypes in Alice Childress' "Trouble in Mind." But it is equally true when she's playing a role less likely to draw the audience's sympathies, such as the dour maid and title character Butler portrayed in Tony Kushner's "Caroline, or Change," or the at-times ruthless diva at the center of the production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" now running at Center Stage.

In the age when a 140-character tweet is about as literary as some folks get, and when the most obvious of observations or lamest of jokes can elicit a "LOL" response, there's something doubly refreshing about the opportunity to indulge in the long, luscious feast of language and humor currently on the boards at Center Stage . Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals" follows in the daunting footsteps of Shakespeare's most sparkling and plot-thick...

In 1992, David Sedaris rose - almost elf-like, you might say - into the spotlight by reading from his essay "The Santaland Diaries" on NPR's Morning Edition. With his soft-grained voice and disarmingly understated style of delivery, Sedaris broke a lot of people up recounting his experiences at Macy's in New York, dressed as one of Santa's helpers, guiding kids and their control-freaky parents toward the place where Christmas gift wishes could be expressed and, at least theoretically, granted.

Center Stage seems to have a thing for public accommodations these days. The company's last play was set in a nondescript motel room. The current one is set in a nondescript hotel room. The deja vu feeling is intensified since both productions have been presented in the intimate Head Theatre, with the stage in the exact same position, and by the fact that the first character to enter goes directly into the bathroom. The similarities are all coincidental, of course, but still intriguing, especially when it comes to the mix of humor and some pretty serious stuff that fills each piece.

Kwame Kwei-Armah is turning up the floodlights on Center Stage . It's been not quite two years since the British-born playwright became artistic director of Maryland's largest regional theater. With his production of two button-pushing dramas nicknamed "The Raisin Cycle," the beams emanating from 700 N. Calvert St. are strong enough to be spotted in distant places, from the Big Apple to the Badger State. Articles about the cycle, in which both plays run in repertoire and have the same casts, have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In Act 1 of “Clybourne Park,” the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play by Bruce Norris receiving a potent Baltimore premiere at Center Stage, civility breaks down as white and black characters in a modest Chicago house start talking about the one thing they'd all rather avoid - race. “I am ashamed of every one of us,” says Bev, a woman determined to emit a June Cleaver neatness and brightness, even though her husband is no Ward, and her son, who served in the Korean War, is now just an unsettling memory.

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.

It looks like a full-fledged trend -- Baltimore theater companies adding performances of productions thanks to popular demand this winter. First to announce was Everyman Theatre, which  extended the run of "August: Osage County. "  Two more companies have likewise found themselves with hits. Katori Hall's "The Mountaintop" isn't for everybody, but this serious/humorous/surreal look at Rev. Martin Luther King's last night, April 3, 1968, has turned out to be "one of the highest grossing plays" in the 50-year history of Center Stage, the company reports.

When Vincent Lancisi was 6 years old, his father sat the boy on his lap for a serious conversation. "Don't ever go into the music business, Vinny," Ben Lancisi told his youngest son. "You'll never make any money in the entertainment industry. And it's terrible for family life. " The boy loved and admired his father and was determined to follow his advice. So, though he showed talent at the piano and had a pleasing tenor, he didn't pursue a musical career when he grew up. He started his own theater company instead.

Center Stage welcomes the New Year with Katori Hall's "The Mountaintop," a play set in the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 3, 1968. The main characters are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a maid who stops by his room. The production, directed by Center Stage artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah, starts previews next week, opens Jan. 16 and runs through Feb. 24. The run coincides with MLK Day on Jan. 21, so the company is adding a performance that night to mark the occasion. Pricing will be different, too -- there's a pay-what-you-can policy for 100 tickets.

Perhaps now, the rest of us will have our say. If there is an overriding hope for the Oct. 30 "Rally to Restore Sanity" that "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart is holding in Washington, surely that's it: a simple prayer that maybe the rest of us will finally be able to get a word in edgewise. The comedian's rally — a "call to reasonableness" it says on the "Daily Show" website — promises a welcome antidote to the tide of craziness now engulfing this country. My colleague, cartoonist Jim Morin, did this great animation on The Miami Herald's website (www.

There's a lot of talk in Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's "A Skull in Connemara," and some of what its characters say may even be true. Sadness and violence also percolate just beneath the surface of the jocular banter, prompting uneasy laughter from the audience at Center Stage. That volatile mix of emotions is something of a trademark for McDonagh, whose credits include "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," "The Lonesome West" and "The Cripple of Inishmaan. " He knows how to pull you into an amusing story and then jolt you with its less amusing undercurrents.

In a city of aging, closely built rowhouses, where officials estimate smoke detectors are sufficiently installed in only about half, knowledge of fires is prevalent, even among the youngest of residents. Ask a group of elementary and middle schoolers in Baltimore to raise a hand if they know someone who has survived a fire, or have seen the devastation fires can cause, and most will put a hand in the air, says Linnea Anderson, an American Red Cross representative on a recent afternoon visit to the Baltimore School for the Arts.