Former Casualty actor and Celebrity Fame Academy singer Kwami Kwei-Armah is hoping the success of his stage plays will encourage more artistic directors to invest in black writers

ONE minute Kwami Kwei-Armah was best known to the public as paramedic Fin in BBC1's long-running hospital soap Casualty. The next he was everywhere - singing on Celebrity Fame Academy, recording a soul album, offering opinions on Question Time, and being named most promising playwright.

It was a change almost as major as in the late 1980s when, after tracing his roots via the slave trade back to his African origins, the Middlesex-born Ian Roberts legally changed his name to Kwami Kwei-Armah to adopt this family heritage.

Kwami was writing and acting before Casualty made him a high profile TV performer, but admits that people are more willing to listen to his voice now.

And it's that voice that will be heard - as both actor and writer - when the touring production of his play Elmina's Kitchen, first seen at the National Theatre in London two years ago, comes to West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

He plays an ex-boxer trying to make an honest living and keep his son away from the lure of Hackney's "murder mile". But, as the synopsis puts it, "when living in a place where acceptance comes on four wheels and respect through the barrel of a gun, how can a man save his son from temptation?".

His intention was always that the play should tour. "The idea was that it was a national play which needed a national audience up and around the country, and it's tremendous that we're now doing that," he says.

Kwami was a writer before he began playing Fin, but it took Celebrity Fame Academy for that to come to the fore. "All of a sudden it was the ambulance driver became Kwami who could sing. It was the most magnificent thing," he says.

"I'm writing and acting now, particularly writing at the moment. It could be a combination of all three. The only thing I'm not doing in this play is singing.

"I was always going to act in it. I performed in plays I've written before and it's been part of the deal. And I've written a character that's not been close to my age, so they've put it on without me."

Kwami is able to separate his acting and his writing on a project like Elmina's Kitchen, which is directed by Angus Jackson. "It's all about objectivity and handing over to the director on day one of rehearsals," he explains. "I'm asking him, 'what's this line here?'. I have to attack the role like an actor and make sense of playing the emotions."

This particular play was sparked off by his concerns at witnessing black on black violence. "I'm of the generation that when a black man was attacked, it was by a gang of white youths. Now the fear is the other way," he says.

"My reason for writing the play was for it to be a catalyst for debate. It's not just about gangs, it's about intergenerational conflict - how fathers teach their sons and how sons talk to their children. It's about three generations.

"I'm tremendously pleased with the play on several counts. It does create debate. In every theatre we have an after-show discussion and the people who stay behind to take part are immense. And it's a play that's won awards."

Kwami's work is finding a wide audience. Elmina's Kitchen has been staged in Baltimore in the US. He has another play which is currently a sell-out success at the National Theatre. "At one point, I had three plays running at the same time, which is more than I ever dreamed of," he says.

Elmina's Kitchen is set to transfer in the West End. He's writing a feature film and another play, and is going to South Africa to record a Songs Of Praise programme for the BBC. So you can't disagree with his statement that "there are so many options".

Kwami's playwriting developed out of his frustrations as an actor "sitting there and feeling sorry for myself that there was no work for black actors". A firm believer in self-determination, he decided that writing plays and roles for those actors was the solution.

Writing comes "naturally, not easily", he says. He likes creating characters, although he finds the technical side of constructing stories harder.

Elmina's Kitchen was one of the plays he wrote while working on Casualty. The two jobs added up to 19-hour days. He left the BBC series after five years, but admits to missing TV acting and envisages return to the small screen at some point.

Before that, he would love it if the success of his plays helps others like him get recognised. "Hopefully, it will encourage other artistic directors to invest in other black writers," he says.

l Elmina's Kitchen is at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from March 30 to April 9. Tickets 0113 213 7700.