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]
Early life
Kwei-Armah was born at Hillingdon Hospital in West London,[8] and named Ian Roberts.[9] He changed his name when he was aged 19 after tracing his family history (in which he first became interested as a child after watching the TV series Roots), through the slave trade back to his ancestral African roots in Ghana, descendant of Coromantins. His parents were born in Grenada, then a British colony. His maternal grandmother moved to Trinidad, where she died, leaving her five children including Kwei-Armah's mother as orphans in Grenada. Kwei-Armah's mother moved to Britain in 1962. His father, Eric, moved to Britain in 1960, at a time when there was high unemployment in Grenada, and found work in London at the local Quaker Oats factory.[9]
When he was one year old, Kwei-Armah's family moved to a two-storey terraced house in Southall where they let two rooms to help to pay for the mortgage.[9] Kwei-Armah started at his first primary school as a five-year-old, and after a teacher disciplined him by kicking him in the back, his mother took on three jobs to pay for him and his two siblings to go to a private stage school, the Barbara Speake Stage School in London – working as a child minder, as a night nurse at Hillingdon Hospital, and doing some hairdressing work. He also attended The Salvation Army, and received musical training there. At the age of about 35, his mother had a stroke leading to left-sided weakness, from which she slowly recovered.[9]
Kwei-Armah grew up in West London's Southall in the 1970s at a time when Asian families were moving in and white families were moving out, and he perceived animosity from the Asian community towards the Afro-Caribbean community. One day, at the time of Friday 3 July 1981Southall riots, his father came home after the evening work-shift and took him out to see the Hambrough Tavern on fire. Kwei-Armah saw a police van arrive, and when the police started to charge at the crowd using batons and shields he ran home frightened. He claims to have seen from the upstairs front room the police chasing black and Asian boys along the street followed by skinheads, who also had batons and shields, chasing behind the police.[9] The event shocked him making him feel that he was living in an alien environment, and reinforced his resolve to do well in his education. He later wrote about the event in his first play, A Bitter Herb.[9]
Appearances on stage, television and radio
As Ian Roberts, Kwei-Armah portrayed Duke, who was one of The Latchkey Children in the eponymous London Weekend Television series that was written by Eric Allen and aired in 1980.[10]
He presented the 15 February 2009 episode of the Channel 4 documentary Christianity: A History, during which he spoke about his own Christian faith and African identity, in addition to the African origins of Christianity in Ethiopia.
In the summer of 2009, he presented the Channel 4 series On Tour with the Queen, which looked at the impact of Queen Elizabeth II's tour of the Commonwealth that took place between November 1953 and May 1954. He also met with King George Tupou V of Tonga, Sitiveni Rabuka and Queen Elizabeth II herself on the trip. In March 2010, Kwei-Armah appeared in the penultimate and final episodes of the fourth series of Skins.
For a number of years Kwei-Armah has appeared as a panellist on the arts discussion show Newsnight Review. He also appeared on Question Time on two occasions and reported for The Culture Show.
On 15 May 2011 he was the stranded person on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His musical selections included the political power-rap of Chuck D and his band Public Enemy, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley and Lord Kitchener. Kwei-Armah said living with his parents was like existing with two very different types of theatre in the family home: he would be serving rum to his father and his pals, while his mother was hosting church meetings in the living-room.
Kwei-Armah's fifth play, Elmina's Kitchen, premiered in May 2003 at the National Theatre, and was shortlisted in the Best New Play category at the 2004 Laurence Olivier Awards. That same year, Kwei-Armah received the Evening Standard Award for the Most Promising New Playwright of 2003. In 2005, he was nominated for a BAFTA award for the television version of Elmina's Kitchen.
Walter's War, a drama written by Kwei-Armah and based on the wartime experiences of footballer Walter Tull's life, was made by UK TV channel BBC Four and screened on 9 November 2008 as part of the BBC's "Ninety Years of Remembrance" season in November 2008. Kwei-Armah also had a cameo role in the film.
Kwei-Armah is a member of the board of the National Theatre and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University in 2008, and in 2009 was a judge for the BBC World Service's International Radio Playwriting Competition.[14] On 28 February 2011, he was named as the new artistic director at Baltimore's Center Stage theatre, replacing Irene Lewis, who had served in the position for 19 years. Kwei-Armah's play Elmina's Kitchen had been staged in 2005, followed by Let There Be Love in 2010, and in 2007 he directed Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours.[15]
Kwei-Armah wrote and directed the world premiere of Marley, a musical based on the life and music of Bob Marley which ran at Center Stage, Baltimore in May and June 2015. In March and April 2017 the musical made its UK premiere in a new production (rewritten by Kwei Armah) at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre under a new title One Love: The Bob Marley Musical.
In October 2016 Kwei-Armah directed the European premiere of One Night in Miami by the award-winning, black, US playwright Kemp Powers.[18]One Night in Miami ran from 6 October to 3 December 2016 at the Donmar Warehouse in London's West End. The all-black cast portrays the friendship between four of the most celebrated black icons in American history at a pivotal moment in their lives: 22-year-old boxing champion Cassius Clay, on the brink of becoming Muhammad Ali, celebrates his world heavyweight championship title with controversial civil rights activist Malcolm X, along with singer songwriter Sam Cooke and NFL champion footballer Jim Brown. The action takes place in a Miami hotel room, watched over by Nation of Islam security.[19]
Kwei-Armah was a credited lyricist on the ArrDee and Cat Burns single "Home for My Heart", which was released on 9 March 2023.[20] The single debuted at number 35 on the UK Singles Chart.[21]
Controversy surrounding Tree
On 2 July 2019, The Guardian published a story describing how Tori Allen-Martin and Sarah Henley claimed they had been removed from the production of Tree.[22] In 2015, Elba had asked them to develop and workshop his idea for a musical based on his album Idris Elba Presents mi Mandela, on which Allen-Martin had also collaborated. Allen-Martin and Henley said they had worked on the project for four years. In 2018, the show was commissioned by Manchester International Festival for their 2019 festival[23] and Kwei-Armah was asked to join the project by Elba and Manchester International Festival as writer and director of the show. Tree was later billed as "created by Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah".[24] Allen-Martin and Henley claim that their creative input had included research, script-writing as well as the play's title, and that they were threatened with legal action if they went public with the story.[25] The co-producers of Tree released a statement refuting their claims.[26] Kwei-Armah and Elba both published personal responses to Allen-Martin and Henley's claims on Twitter.[27][28] Elba said it was his "contractual right as beholder of the original idea, the album" to take the show in a different creative direction. The producers state that the two versions of Tree are "different projects....Any similarities between the 2019 production of Tree, and Tori and Sarah’s 2016 workshopped script can be attributed to the fact that both were based upon the same original concept created by Idris Elba."[29]
Personal life
Kwei-Armah has three children from his first marriage to Fyna Dowe and one from his second.[30][31] His son Kwame Jr, professionally known as KZ, contributed production and vocals to Wretch 32 and Avelino's 2015 mixtape Young Fire, Old Flame, and Wretch 32's third studio album, Growing Over Life, released in September 2016.
Idrissa Akuna Elba is an English actor, rapper, singer, and DJ. An alumnus of the National Youth Music Theatre in London, he is known for roles including Stringer Bell in the HBO series The Wire (2002–2004), DCI John Luther in the BBC One series Luther (2010–2019), and Nelson Mandela in the biographical film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013). For Luther, he received four nominations each for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor, winning one of the former.
Center Stage is the state theater of Maryland, and Baltimore's largest professional producing theater.
The Young Vic Theatre is a performing arts venue located on The Cut, near the South Bank, in the London Borough of Lambeth.
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Oscar James is a Trinidadian actor who is based in the United Kingdom. He has had a long and varied career, but is best known for appearing on British television, in particular the BBC soap opera EastEnders, in which he was one of the original 23 cast members as Tony Carpenter, a role he played for over two years.
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Doña Croll is a Jamaican-born British actress. She is best known for her roles in soap operas playing Pearl McHugh in Channel 5's Family Affairs, Vera Corrigan in Doctors, and Emerald Fox in EastEnders, both on the BBC. She also played the regular role of nurse Adele Beckford in series 8 of Casualty.
The Manchester International Festival is a biennial international arts festival, with a specific focus on original new work, held in the English city of Manchester and run by Factory International. The festival is a biennial event, first taking place in June–July 2007, and subsequently recurring in the summers of 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021. MIF23 will take place in summer 2023. The organisation is based in Blackfriars House, adjacent to Blackfriars Bridge but is due to move to a new £110 million new home, Factory International, in 2023.
Elmina's Kitchen, first performed in May 2003, is the fifth play from the British actor, playwright and broadcaster, Kwame Kwei-Armah. Set in a West Indian restaurant in London, Elmina's Kitchen tells a tale of family, drugs and crime on Hackney's Murder Mile. The play is centred on the character of Deli, the owner of a West Indian restaurant and father to Ashley. Ashley is a misguided teen who cannot help but be seduced by the gangster culture that surrounds him. Deli tries to run a successful restaurant while attempting to keep his son on the straight and narrow particularly when his son gets closer to a well-known local gangster, Digger.
Geoffrey Streatfeild is an English actor in film, television, stage and radio.
Arinzé Mokwe Kene is a Nigerian-born British actor and playwright.
The Barbara Speake Stage School was opened on 10 February 1945 as an independent school, and was initially set up as a dancing school, by the founding principal Miss Barbara Speake, MBE, and was located in East Acton, London. The school was fee-paying but non-selective in its admissions.
Rupert Francis Young is an English actor who is best known for his roles as Sir Leon in the BBC drama series Merlin and as Jack, The Lord Featherington in the Netflix series Bridgerton.
Eleanor Elizabeth Bamber is an English actress. She won third prize at the Ian Charleson Awards for her 2017 performance in The Lady from the Sea at the Donmar Warehouse. On television, she is known for her roles in the BBC series Les Misérables (2018), The Trial of Christine Keeler (2019–2020), and The Serpent (2021), and the Disney+ series Willow (2022).
One Love: The Bob Marley Musical previously titled Marley is a stage musical based on the life and music of Bob Marley, written by Kwame Kwei-Armah.
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Hercules is a musical based on the Walt Disney Animation Studios 1997 film of the same name, with music and lyrics by Alan Menken and David Zippel, and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah. The production is also loosely based on the legendary hero of the same name, the son of Zeus, in Greek mythology.
Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical is a musical based on the life and music of Bob Marley written by Lee Hall.
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Mitchell Brunings is a Dutch musician known for his vocal resemblance to Bob Marley.
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