Kwame Kwei-Armah

Kwame Kwei-Armah
OBE
Kwei-Armah in 2011
Born
Ian Roberts

(1967-03-24) 24 March 1967 (age 57)
Hillingdon, London, England
Alma materBarbara Speake Stage School
Known forActor, playwright, singer, and broadcaster
Children4

Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE (born Ian Roberts; 24 March 1967[1] in Hillingdon, London)[2] is a British actor, playwright, director and broadcaster. In 2005, Kwei-Armah became the second black Briton to have a play staged in the West End of London[a] when his award-winning piece Elmina's Kitchen transferred to the Garrick Theatre. He was the first black Briton to head a major British national theater, when he took the directorship of the Young Vic in 2018.[3] Kwei-Armah was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to drama.[4][5]

Brought up in Southall, West London, he changed his name at the age of 19, after tracing his family history, through the slave trade back to his ancestral African roots in Ghana. His parents were born in Grenada. He has four children.

As an actor, Kwei-Armah is probably best known for playing paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC medical drama Casualty from 1999 until 2004. He served as the chancellor of the University of the Arts London from 2011 to 2015.[6] and was the artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage Theater in the United States from 2011 to 2018.[7] From 2018, he was artistic director of the Young Vic theatre in London, announcing his departure in February 2024.[3]

  1. ^ "20 Questions With...Kwame Kwei-Armah", WhatsOnStage, 9 June 2003, Archived 3 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
  2. ^ "Kwame Kwei-Armah". Theiapolis People. Archived from the original on 18 July 2012. Retrieved 22 September 2009.
  3. ^ a b Akbar, Arifa (8 February 2024). "Theatre needs risk-takers like Kwame Kwei-Armah whose Young Vic has been dynamite". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
  4. ^ "No. 60173". The London Gazette (Supplement). 16 June 2012. p. 8.
  5. ^ "OBE". BBC News. 16 June 2012.
  6. ^ Clement, Olivia (26 September 2017). "Young Vic Names Kwame Kwei-Armah New Artistic Director". Playbill. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
  7. ^ Pressley, Nelson (20 June 2017). "Kwame Kwei-Armah will step down at Baltimore Center Stage next summer". Washington Post.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).