Burning Coal Theatre Co Adds Additional Performance Date For 1960 On 5/7

Burning Coal Theatre Company will present one additional performance of 1960 by Ian Finley and members of the Burning Coal Theatre Company next Thursday, May 7 at 8 pm at Meymandi Theatre at the Murphey School, 224 Polk Street, Raleigh. Tickets may be obtained by calling 919-834-4001. Tickets are $20 or $15 for students/seniors/active military.

In the summer of 1960, the Raleigh City School Board met and voted to begin the desegregation of Raleigh City Schools. That September, a seven year old African American student began the second grade at the Murphey School. He was the first black student to attend a white school in Raleigh. This series of events capped off a years-long battle that began with the passage oF Brown vs the Board of Education. Burning Coal company members have gone out into the community and interviewed people who were among the participants in the civil rights movement. Playwright Ian Finley has then crafted from many interviews and hundreds of hours of research a play that takes us on a whimsically poignant journey to the heart of that distant time.

Ian Finley is education director for Burning Coal Theatre Company. He holds an MFA in playwriting from NYU and an undergraduate degree from the University of Utah. He has been published and has had productions of his plays in six states, including New York, Florida, Utah and North Carolina. His past work includes a series of "Oakwood Plays" about the bizarre and wonderful people now buried in the Oakwood cemetery whose lives once graced or scandalized Raleigh. Other members of the Burning Coal company, including Jen Suchanec, Sherida McMullan, Morag Charlton, Jerome Davis, Lynn Guglielmi and others contributed to the writing of the play through interviews with surviving participants of the civil rights movement or their children and research into the civil rights era.

Jerome Davis is Burning Coal's founding artistic director. His work for the company includes Hysteria, The Prisoner's Dilemma (American premiere), Hamlet, Rat in the Skull, Pentecost (twice), Winding the Ball (American premiere), The Steward of Christendom, The Weir, Night and Day, Inherit the Wind, and others. He has worked as an actor with Trinity Rep in Providence, Philadelphia's People's Light & Theatre Company, the New Jersey Shakespeare Company, Wellfleet Harbor Actors' Theatre, Columbia University, the MINT, 29th Street Rep, Soho Rep, Phoenix Theatre and the Barrow Group. He has worked with or studied with Ellen Burstyn, Ben Gazzarra, Adrian Hall, Richard Jenkins, Steve Harris, Amanda Peet, Hope Davis, David Wheeler, Ralph Waite, Nikos Psacharapolous and Julie Bovasso.

The Cast of 1960 includes Warren Keyes, Joan J, Corey Banks, Emelia Cowens, Greg Paul, Ann Cole, Aaron Wright, Jackson Bloom, Tara Polhemus, Al Singer, Olivia Wells and Kaimy Masse. Lighting design by Christopher Popowich of Pittsburgh, PA, set design by Simmie Kastner or Cary, NC, properties by Lauren Sexton of Raleigh, costumes by Kelly Farrow of Raleigh, musical director Julie Florin of Raleigh. Choreography by Amy Murphy of Raleigh.

For further information on 1960 or Burning Coal's 2008/2009 season, please call Simmie Kastner at 919.834.4001 or visit our website at www.burningcoal.org.

Burning Coal Theatre Company is one of Raleigh's professional Equity theatre companies. Burning Coal is an incorporated, non-profit [501 (c) (3)] organization. Burning Coal's mission is to produce literate, visceral, affecting theatre that is experienced, not simply seen. Burning Coal produces explosive reexaminations of overlooked classic and modern plays, as well as new plays, whose themes and issues are of immediate concern to our audience, using the best local, national and International Artists available. We work toward a theatre of high-energy performances and minimalist production values. The emphasis is on literate works that are felt and experienced viscerally, unlike more traditional linear plays, at which audiences are most often asked to observe without participating. Race and gender non-specific casting is an integral component of our perspective, as well as an international viewpoint.

 

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