Back in 2010, when Baltimore Center Stage artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb was, in his words, “a 20-year-old, fresh-faced baby,” he founded Jubilee Theater in Waco, Texas—a first stab at leading a theatre.
“I didn’t know what an artistic director was,” said Walker-Webb, now 15 months into leading BCS. “I just knew that I liked making theatre and my community, the community that I grew up in, didn’t have a professional theatre.”
It’s that connection to community that eventually pulled Walker-Webb back to being an artistic director over a decade after those “formative” years in Waco. As a freelance director, he said, it was hard to feel fully grounded in a community when considering multiple theatre scenes home. There was, of course, New York, where he got a Tony nomination and an Obie award for directing Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’. But there was also the Huntington in Boston under Loretta Greco, where he directed Fat Ham, and Baltimore Center Stage under Stephanie Ybarra, where he directed a popular Our Town. “You’re constantly going from one community to the next,” Walker-Webb said. “I missed having a place where I could grow and see what impact could be made.”
So, after Ain’t No Mo’ closed on Broadway—a “dizzying” time for Walker-Webb that saw the show nominated for six Tonys while also only being open on Broadway for less than a month—he started to think about how he understands the “show” part of “show business,” as well wanting to get back to the “business” part. He wanted to make an impact beyond the rehearsal room and stage. He wanted to ensure that everything—from what happens in the boardroom to how artists and audiences are invited into and taken care of in a theatrical space—matched the quality and expectations of the art that makes its way to stage. He wanted to affect the whole community.
Now at the helm of BCS, Walker-Webb has a chance to make that impact. We spoke earlier this month about his first year on the job, how he’s hoping to continue growing the theatre’s influence and presence in the community, and what he’s learned since those early years bringing theatre to the folks of Waco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
JERALD RAYMOND PIERCE: Now that you’ve had a chance to spend more time in Baltimore than when you were previously in town to direct a show, what stands out about the theatre community?
STEVIE WALKER-WEBB: If people don’t know yet, they’re going to find out: Baltimore is where it’s at, baby. I’ve worked all over, literally all over the world, and there’s something—Baltimore as a city, it resists gentrification, it resists a certain kind of bleaching of culture. It’s a Black cultural mecca. The most innovative Black culture is happening right here, from fashion to cuisine to live performance. It has a huge DIY and grassroots performance art scene, a huge spoken word and poetry scene, a huge and growing ballroom scene. It has such a rich cultural ecology. There’s also a strong Indigenous presence, Latinx culture, a huge Jewish population and Irish population. I feel like I’m actually living in the heart of America, in a way, because there’s so much culture that’s juxtaposed with each other.
This means, as an artistic director, I get to actually program a diverse season. Not “put a sticker on it” diverse; the bones of what you see on our stage is truly diverse. I’ve had people be like, “What the hell? You’re all over the place.” But I’m trying to reflect the culture of the city, so the plays are as disparate and eclectic as the people who call Baltimore home, which I love.
When you talk about seeing your work as a conversation with the community, where do you see offstage programming coming in? You launched the Juvenile Justice Theatre Program this past October, providing workshops to incarcerated youth in partnership with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services. How do you see efforts like that fitting in?
I talk about Baltimore Center Stage creating a “virtuous circle,” where our main stage is an ambassadorship to the nation that testifies to the cultural greatness and the cultural mecca that Baltimore is as a city. At the same time, we’re going deep in our community. As we get the attention of the nation on Baltimore, I then say, How do we take the surplus energy, the surplus resources, whatever’s coming our way—how do we pour that into our programs?
I’m a very hands-on artistic director. I do not sleep; I drink a lot of coffee. So I leave the rehearsal room or the boardroom and every week I go to the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center. Along with my education associates, we run a weekly program for young men, ages 13 to 18, who live in this detention center. The whole mission is to create space for these young men to see that they have the power to be agents of change in their own narratives. That they can sit in the playwriting chair or the acting chair or the director’s chair and they can cast themselves as protagonists in their own narratives. They don’t have to play the antagonist, the victim, or the villain.
I’ve got a long history of being in relationship to the carceral state because of having a brother who was wrongfully incarcerated during the pandemic and having so many friends and loved ones who’ve been in and out of the prison industrial complex. This is the most rewarding and the most important work that I do; it’s not a program that I just want to run for a year, it’s a permanent program that we’re expanding. The goal is to launch a second arm so we’ll also be in young women’s detention centers as well. We’ll also create paid internships for these young artists, create pathways to employment and the arts for them so it’s not just like we’re there when you’re behind bars.
I’m getting emotional thinking about it, because I grew up low-income and I know that art saved my life. I want to make sure that I can pay it forward. It’s amazing that everyone in the institution is with me.
This reminds me of something you’re quoted as saying in the press release announcing you becoming artistic director. You mentioned wanting to “bring only the most exciting and cutting-edge art to our city.” How do you stay on the cutting edge as an artistic director?
You invest in tomorrow. You invest in the generation that’s coming. I tell the young people in the detention center that one day they’re going to hire me. If one of them doesn’t hire me, I’ve done my job wrong. I invest in them. They’re the future of the American theatre, so it’s making space for their voices to be heard and encouraging them that their voices have value.
We’re in the 40th year of our Young Playwrights Festival. It’s a free playwriting program that goes into Title One schools across Baltimore. These middle school and elementary school kids write plays and then, at the end of the year, we have our Young Playwrights Festival where we produce six of those plays on our main stage. So how do I stay cutting edge? I listen to the next generation.
Zooming out and thinking about everything happening nationally, with a new administration and the uncertainty around what the future may hold for nonprofits, how are you viewing the role of theatres in their communities right now?
I was at the Apollo on Martin Luther King Day 2025. I’ll never, ever forget this day. Jordan Cooper and I were invited to come and, as an act of resistance, do a one-day reading of Ain’t No Mo’ with the original company. When they opened up the tickets to RSVP, 1,000 people RSVP’d in 90 minutes. It was insane. It sold out their space, so much so that they had to stream the play in the theatre next to the theatre we were in.
Zora Neale Hurston said that there are the years that ask the question, and then there are the years that answer the question. I think we are entering a year where we need to be the answer. As artists, we need to be the answer to the questions our society is asking. I think that answer has something to do with love, something to do with inclusion, something to do with human compassion for people who don’t look like us in a time where the world is war-crazy.
Let’s forget reaching across the aisle. We need to dance in the aisle. The time to try to reach across the aisle is over. We need to shout. We need to dance. We need to create spaces of joy in places of dissension. That’s what the revolution needs to look like. Toni Cade Bambara said, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” I shared that with the community in Harlem because we were on fire. We were like, “We’ve been here before.” We’re not shaking and quaking in our boots. Our job is to fight back the darkness with love.
Looking ahead, when your tenure at Baltimore Center Stage eventually ends, what do you hope the community is saying about the company?
Nationally, I want people to be like, “Oh, some of the best plays, some of the most avant-garde, some of the most cutting-edge theatre and storytelling is coming out of Baltimore.” It’s already true, and y’all about to find out.
But my immediate community? Oh, gosh. We’re doing this thing where the entire freshman cohort of Baltimore School for the Arts high school is making up the company of Akeelah and the Bee. Every show we do a community night that’s pay-what-you-can. It’s the best night in the theatre. We host a free meal, and in our lobby you’ve got people of all colors eating a meal together. It’s what I always wanted the theatre to feel like. The community is starting to really feel like this building belongs to them. That’s what I want. I want people to say, “Baltimore Center Stage is my theatre. It belongs to me.” I think we’re getting there.
If you could give advice to your younger self, the Stevie leading a new theatre in Waco for the first time, what advice would you give him about being a leader in this industry?
I was picked on as a kid because I was quirky and often anxious. My grandmother, who died in ’95, one day when I was feeling bad for myself, she sat me down and she told me, “Don’t change who you are, because your personality is going to take you through the world.” I’ll never forget her telling me that. I would tell little Stevie that Grandma’s right.
Jerald Raymond Pierce is the managing editor of American Theatre.
