Baltimore Center Stage's New Artistic Director Aims To Bring More Diversity To Theater
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Stephanie Ybarra is the new Artistic Director at Baltimore's Center Stage.
Ybarra is a Texan who most recently has been working in New York. Now, however, she's in Baltimore; one of the few women in the US running a major professional theater.
"Baltimore is the first place ever that I see myself staying for as long as Baltimore will have me," she said. "I love it here."
One of only four women of color running a major American theater, Ybarra identifies as Latinx.
"Even though I identify as a woman, I use the 'X' at the end of Latin in solidarity for the idea that gender is fluid.
Gender has been fluid in the plays that Ybarra has chosen and in the way they've been cast this first season.
Ybarra: "I have no problem with women playing whatever character they want to play."
WJZ's Denise Koch: "What about women playing men's roles?"
Ybarra: "I don't know who said they were men's roles, to begin with. I think theater has a very long way to go in terms of its inclusion and acceptance of women in all areas of theater-making."
WJZ's Denise Koch: "So, why is that important? Why is it important we have more women and more women of color in the theater?"
Ybarra: "Our arts industry is part of the economic engine of this country. Not to mention, there's a theory that if you hire more women, they will hire more women, and inclusion begets inclusion."
The next production at Center Stage is "Where We Stand."
It opens on April 2.
"There is something palpably, marketably different about sitting in a room full of people and having the same experience of story-telling," Ybarra said. "Netflix can't touch it."
