A Theater Celebrates 50 Years With 50 New Films

September 27, 2012, 3:17 pm

By ERIK PIEPENBURG

To celebrate its 50th season, Baltimore's Center Stage has commissioned a series of 50 short films, written by 50 established and emerging playwrights, starring well-known stage and screen actors directed by the indie filmmaker Hal Hartley (“Henry Fool”).

Starting Friday and continuing through Nov. 6, the night of the presidential election, a new group of films will debut weekly online and on screens in the theater's lobby. The first video, released today as a preview, was written by Anna Deavere Smith (“Let Me Down Easy”) and features the actor Stephen McKinley Henderson playing a principal drafting a letter to parents about a school tragedy.

Kwame Kwei-Armah, a year into his job as th e theater's artistic director, said the “My America” project was born out of his own desire to find out “what this country wants to be and where it's heading.”

“I asked myself, what do I really know about this country?” said Mr. Kwei-Armah, a native of London. “How will I find out about what this country wants to be and where it's heading? I should ask writers. I trust them. I trust that they will show me the crack between the black and the white notes.”

Of the approximately 60 writers who were approached, 55 said yes, and the theater whittled that number down to 50. Writers were given only a few parameters. They had to answer the question “What is my America?” They could write only monologues that were about three minutes in length. (Ms. Deavere Smith's runs longer.) That's it.

Playwrights turned in dark comedies, light dramas, and even a musical. Rajiv Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”) wrote a piece about an elderly man who thinks back on his life during a visit to Roosevelt Island. Lydia R. Diamond (“Stick Fly”) wrote a comedy about a writer who is asked to write a monologue for a theater. Other participating playwrights include Christopher Durang (“Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them”), Quiara Alegría Hudes (“Water by the Spoonful”), Neil LaBute (“reasons to be pretty”), Thomas Bradshaw (“Job”), Samuel D. Hunter (“A Bright New Boise”) and Lynn Nottage (“Ruined”).

When it came time to choose the performers, the playwrights suggested actors who they felt would best interpret their work. Working with a casting director, the theater recruited a stable of theater regulars, including Tracie Thoms, Carrie Preston, Terry O'Quinn, Bobby Cannavale, Kathleen Chalfant, Jefferson Mays and Kristine Nielsen. Mr. Kwei-Armah said the casting process went easier than anticipated.

“Nearly every actor said yes immediate ly,” he said.

Mr. Hartley shot the films in New York and Los Angeles over the course of about three weeks. Mr. Kwei-Armah said all the participants were paid “a token couple of dollars,” and several people donated their money back to the theater. The entire project cost about $50,000, which came from donations made by the theater's subscribers and patrons.

Mr. Kwei-Armah said his goal for the project was to create “state-of-the-nation plays” that would act as “an archive of a moment in America's history.”

“Within the realms of theater we are here not just here to narrowly entertain,” he said. “We are here to say this is who we are, to take a pulse of the nation.”

Now that he's seen all the films, what did Mr. Kwei-Armah feel in that pulse?

“We are a country that is about introspection, a country deciding what tomorrow will look like, what it should look like and negotiating how to get there,” said Mr. Kwei-Armah. “Mo st of the writers have expressed an anxiousness to renegotiate the principles that are America.”