31 Facts About Kwame Kwei-Armah

In 2005, Kwei-Armah became the second black Briton to have a play staged in the West End of London when his award-winning piece Elmina's Kitchen transferred to the Garrick Theatre.

Kwame Kwei-Armah was the first black Briton to head a major British national theater, when he took the directorship of the Young Vic in 2018.

Kwame Kwei-Armah was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to drama.

Kwame Kwei-Armah served as the chancellor of the University of the Arts London from 2011 to 2015.

Kwame Kwei-Armah was born at Hillingdon Hospital in West London, and named Ian Roberts.

Kwame Kwei-Armah changed his name when he was aged 19 after tracing his family history, through the slave trade back to his ancestral African roots in Ghana, descendant of Coromantins.

Kwame Kwei-Armah's parents were born in Grenada, then a British colony.

When he was one year old, Kwame 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.

Kwame Kwei-Armah attended The Salvation Army, and received musical training there.

Kwame 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.

Kwame 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.

Kwame Kwei-Armah later wrote about the event in his first play, A Bitter Herb.

Kwame Kwei-Armah appeared in the original London production of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, which played at the Criterion Theatre in 1993.

Kwame Kwei-Armah first achieved fame playing the paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC drama series Casualty from 1999 to 2004.

Kwame Kwei-Armah 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.

Kwame Kwei-Armah met with King George Tupou V of Tonga, Sitiveni Rabuka and Queen Elizabeth II herself on the trip.

In March 2010, Kwame Kwei-Armah appeared in the penultimate and final episodes of the fourth series of Skins.

Kwame Kwei-Armah appeared on Question Time on two occasions and reported for The Culture Show.

Kwame 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.

In 2011 Kwame Kwei-Armah chose Marcus Garvey as his subject for the BBC Radio 4 series Great Lives.

That same year, Kwame Kwei-Armah received the Evening Standard Award for the Most Promising New Playwright of 2003.

Walter's War, a drama written by Kwame 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.

Kwame 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.

Kwame Kwei-Armah was involved in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, for which he wrote a piece based on a chapter of the King James Bible.

Kwame Kwei-Armah is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.

Kwame 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 October 2016 Kwame Kwei-Armah directed the European premiere of One Night in Miami by the award-winning, black, US playwright Kemp Powers.

Kwame Kwei-Armah collaborated with Idris Elba on the musical Tree, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2019.

Kwame Kwei-Armah was a credited lyricist on the ArrDee and Cat Burns single "Home for My Heart", which was released on 9 March 2023.

In 2018, the show was commissioned by Manchester International Festival for their 2019 festival and Kwame Kwei-Armah was asked to join the project by Elba and Manchester International Festival as writer and director of the show.

Kwame Kwei-Armah has three children from his first marriage to Fyna Dowe and one from his second.