Civic & Community
While all three stages of Baltimore Center Stage at 700 North Calvert come alive with work both classic and contemporary, even more theatrical vitality is coming to life out in the community at large—with an array of additional artistic and engagement activities.
Mobile Unit
Arguably the centerpiece of these endeavors is the Mobile Unit, which recently offered its fourth iteration to neighbors and partners around the Baltimore metro area. Beginning in our 2015/16 Season as a pilot program with a reduced-scale rendition of the classic Cyrano de Bergerac, Mobile Unit has gone on to reimagine and restage a variety of work from across the canon. Each new Mobile production is conceived for a handful of actors, a compact playing time, and a simple travelling production that breaks down the walls of traditional theater and offers access to the highest-quality theater for those in often-overlooked communities. Personal, immersive, and intimate.
Following Beckett’s sparsely absurd Endgame (2016/17) and the comically condensed Twelfth Night (2017/18), the 2018/19 season brought a fresh encounter with Sophocles’ searing moral melodrama, Antigone—featuring brand new poetic choruses from locally based and nationally honored spoken word artist, Lady Brion.
The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions
The Baltimore Butterfly Session is a series of free community gatherings at Baltimore Center Stage! Featuring music, poetry, literary excerpts, and thought-provoking keynote addresses, The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions will catalyze conversation and build awareness around today’s most pressing issues. Tapping into some of the brightest voices around the nation and in Baltimore, each Butterfly Session will bring together artists, activists, organizers, and thinkers to unpack a civically resonant topic. Come for the music, come for the poetry, come for the conversation.
Our community partners include the following:
Baltimore School for the Arts
Marian House
House of Ruth
YO! Baltimore
Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Heritage United Church of Christ
Healthcare for the Homeless
Greenmount West Community Association
Goucher Prison Education Partnership
Earl’s Place
Weinberg Housing and Resource Center
Strong City Baltimore
The Sandtown Winchester Senior Center
Odenton Regional Library
Edgewater Community Library
South County Senior Activity Center
Forest Park Senior Center
Cherry Hill Senior Center
Weinberg Senior Living