When Kwame Kwei-Armah spotted a group of high school students walking back to class after attending a play he'd written, he rushed across Mount Vernon Square to intercept them.
Kwei-Armah had previously met the teens during a visit to the Baltimore School for the Arts and knew they had tickets to a matinee of "Elmina's Kitchen." On that winter afternoon in 2005, Kwei-Armah couldn't wait to hear the youngsters' reactions to his explosive urban drama and to answer their questions.
"We had an impromptu post-show discussion right there in the park," says Donald Hicken, who chairs the high school's theater department. "I was impressed with the way Kwame conducted himself. He was so open and warm and candid. The kids were just blown away."
Kwei-Armah, 44, a British playwright, actor, singer, director, reality-show contestant and former newspaper columnist, was appointed last week to become artistic director at Center Stage. (He replaces Irene Lewis, who is leaving at the end of her 19th season.) Advocates say the encounter in the square exemplifies a leadership style that will strengthen ties between Maryland's most prominent regional troupe and the city where it's located.
"Kwame's appointment is a real coup for Center Stage and for Baltimore," says Teresa Eyring, executive director of the Theatre Communications Group, a trade association representing the nation's 700 largest nonprofit stages.
"He's an absolute dynamic and visionary artist, and he's extremely in tune with the communities in which he functions. He concerns himself not just with the artistic life of a community, but with all aspects of life in that community."
Kwei-Armah is of African and Caribbean descent. When he begins his new job July 1, he will become one of the new black men in the U.S. to lead a company with a mainstream, mixed-race audience, joining Sheldon Epps in Pasadena, Calif., and Timothy Bond in Syracuse, N.Y.
He also will become one of just a handful of playwrights in America, along with Emily Mann in Princeton and Moises Kaufman in New York, to be hired for a job that almost always is held by stage directors.
Kwei-Armah was one of four finalists. The others included the founder of a New York theater troupe who has won an Obie (Off-Broadway) Award; an up-and-coming director with a national reputation; and a veteran stage director with a sackful of prestigious prizes.
If Kwei-Armah has comparatively few directing credits, perhaps it's because he was busy doing so many other things.
He first obtained celebrity status in Great Britain by acting for six years in an "ER"-style television program called 'Casualty." When he left the show in 2004, his decision made headlines.
He later was runner-up in an "American Idol"-style television show, released a pop album called "Kwame" and wrote a regular column for the British newspaper The Guardian.
Kwei-Armah is most famous for having written a widely acclaimed trilogy of plays, including "Elmina's Kitchen," that explore race and cultural roots.
He made his directing debut in 2007, when he oversaw a production of Naomi Wallace's "Things of Dry Hours" for Center Stage. Since then, he's helmed a 10-minute play on Broadway and has staged two of his own works.
Kwei-Armah also served as artistic director for a monthlong celebration of black arts and culture in Senegal, and he sits on the boards of three theater troupes in London — including the venerable National Theatre.
"Kwame is a nontraditional choice," says Jed Dietz, who chaired the 13-member search committee. "He didn't come to us through normal channels.
"But vision and boldness were the most important things to us. We were freed up to select him because of the confidence we have in the systems in place on the production and business sides of Center Stage. Some big theaters are dicier financially, but Center Stage is a very, very well-run operation."
Before making its decision, the search committee also took the unprecedented step of setting up extensive roundtable discussions for each finalist with a dozen members of Baltimore's theater community.
Actor James Kinstle was part of those chats, and he says he admires an understudy program for young actors that Kwei-Armah created for the National.
The understudies earned their first professional credit, and occasionally they'd appear on stage. Once the show closed, their experience at the National opened doors at other companies.
"Wouldn't it be brilliant if Baltimore actors could get to make a living in Baltimore," Kinstle said, "instead of having to go to Washington and New York to find work?"
Eyring and others predicted that Kwei-Armah's impact will extend far beyond the city's boundaries.
"The excitement in the local theater community is palpable," said Vincent Lancisi, artistic director of Everyman Theatre.
"Kwame is the most exciting choice the search committee could possibly have made," Lancisi said. "He has the potential to change the dialogue about theater in America nationally and even internationally. I think he's going to put Center Stage on the map in a way that it never has been before."