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Kwame Kwei Armah is an award-winning playwright, actor, and for the last six years artistic director of Baltimore’s Center Stage theatre. In June 2017, he is directing the world premiere of Jazz, an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s 1992 novel, a twisted love triangle set in 1920s Harlem.

During the frantic second week of rehearsals, Kwame talks to fellow Baltimorean David Simon (American TV producer, writer, journalist, and creator of The Wire and Treme) about the challenges of bringing this brand new play to the stage. The novel explores the African-American experience in 1920s Harlem and evokes jazz through its musical, improvisational structure - full of repetitions and revisions. For Kwame, the challenge is to open up this complex story in a theatrical way.

We join cast and crew as they sweat it out in rehearsals. The play’s World Premiere is in 10 days, and Kwame has just received the last 40 pages of script. It is a rough and ready process, and Kwame expects his actors to be ready to fly by the seat of their pants. We eavesdrop on the costume shop, props workshop and set builders who must bring Kwame’s vision to life and evoke the musical worlds of Toni Morrison’s book.

Kwame and David also discuss the energy and terror of being at the helm of an artistic institution in Baltimore. This is a city with a long history of racial tension, but hit global headlines in April 2015 when the death of Freddie Gray - a 25 year old black man in police custody - sparked mass protests and civil uprisings on a scale not seen since the death of Martin Luther King Jr, almost half a century ago. For Kwame, now is a time for artists to speak truth to power. At heart, he is a political playwright who is learning to be a responsible curator. His artistic mission is to sometimes gently lead the Baltimore community, sometimes gently poke it, and use metaphor to talk to the here and now.

(Photo: David Simon (L) and (R) Kwame Kwei-Armah)