Autumn Lecture Series 2024: Theatre – Innovation, Access and Community

(Monday 30th September 2024)

When watching live, you can increase the quality of the video to 720p by pressing the ‘settings cog’ button on the video menu. You can also unmute and change the volume.

Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE is Artistic Director of the Young Vic Theatre and Artistic Advisor at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York.  He was previously Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage (2011-18) and Artistic Director of the Festival of Black Arts and Culture, Senegal (2010), where he wrote and directed the opening ceremony at Senghor stadium. As a playwright, Kwame was the first black Briton to have a play produced in London’s commercial West End (Elmina’s Kitchen). His triptych of plays was produced at the National Theatre, where he later created the online resource The Black Play Archive.

Kwame was Chancellor of the University of the Arts, London (2010-2015), is Patron of Ballet Black and The Black Cultural Archives, Chair of Warwick Arts Centre Advisory Board and a Trustee of the Tate and the founding Trustee Black Equity Organisation. Kwame was awarded an OBE for Services to Drama in 2011, and in 2020 listed as one of 100 Great Black Britons.