Center Stage

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.

Even in his first job, Stephen Richard showed a flair for devising unorthodox methods of helping a cash-strapped California theater festival make ends meet. "In Los Angeles in the early 1980s, it was kind of the custom that when a rock group went off tour, the crew got a bonus by selling the equipment off the back of the truck," he said during an interview in his new work space at Center Stage . "Their wasn't much market for used stuff, and it was kind of expected. They'd back the truck right up to our door.

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.

INDIANAPOLIS - The Ravens have drafted an interior offensive lineman in the first round just once in team history, taking Auburn left guard Ben Grubbs with the 29th pick in the 2007 draft. They are picking in the same spot again this April, and that plan could repeat itself in an effort to find Grubbs' replacement. Offensive linemen took center stage at the first full day of the NFL scouting combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. They interviewed with teams, underwent psychological and physical testing and then met with the media.

Joan W. Denny, who had bipolar disorder for most of her life and was a longtime participant in Johns Hopkins University Mood Disorders Center-Symposium, died Jan. 11 of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 79. Joan Weiskittel Denny was born in Baltimore and raised on Overhill Road in Roland Park. She was a 1948 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and studied theater at Finch College in New York City. After graduating from Finch in 1950, she worked in New York as a production assistant for several Broadway producers.

Center Stage concludes one of its most successful seasons with "Seven Guitars" by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson."Seven Guitars" is the tale of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, whose unexpected hit blues song promises to take him from the streets of post-World War II Pittsburgh to success in Chicago. Although he's fresh out of jail and penniless, he discovers that home and history are just as appealing as potential fame and fortune.With "Seven Guitars," Center Stage will have presented nearly all of Wilson's major works.

IRENE LEWIS, acting artistic director for the 1991-92 season at Center Stage and mastermind of the madcap version of "Twelfth Night" playing its last week at the theater, has a long roster of credentials.Associate artist at Center Stage for five years and former associate director of the Hartford Stage Company for eight years, Lewis also directed for the Philadelphia Drama Guild and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.With such an impressive record of achievements one would never guess Lewis was once a swing director for the television soap "Another World."

The 23rd Annual Benefit Gala may have been celebrating Center Stage and its programs. But for many of the guests at the theater's annual shindig, this night was all about outgoing board president Lynn Deering, who was stepping down after six years on the job. "She is so hard working. I mean, she has devoted herself to the Center Stage board. [She put in] thousands of hours - fundraising, legislative work; things that she's never done before. She put her whole heart and soul into doing this," said Lainy LeBow-Sachs, executive vice president for external relations for the Kennedy Krieger Institute.