Dramatist Ian Finley Selected as 2012 Piedmont Laureate
Raleigh dramatist Ian Finley has been selected as the region's 2012 Piedmont Laureate. He will be introduced as the region's new laureate at the State of Arts and Culture in Wake County meeting on Thursday, January 12 at the North Carolina Museum of Art's East Building auditorium. The meeting, sponsored by the United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, begins at 8 a.m. and is free and open to the public.
The Piedmont Laureate program is dedicated to building a literary bridge for residents to come together and celebrate the art of writing. Co-sponsored by the United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, Alamance County Arts Council, City of Raleigh Arts Commission, Durham Arts Council, and Orange County Arts Commission, the program's mission is to "promote awareness and heighten appreciation for excellence in the literary arts throughout the Piedmont region." The program focuses on a different literary form each year (poetry in 2009, novels in 2010, creative non-fiction in 2011 and dramatist/screenwriter in 2012).
Currently, Finley is Director of Education for Burning Coal, heading its WillPower residency programs, its Summer Theatre Conservatories, and many other programs. For being named the Piedmont Laureate, Finley will receive an honorarium of $6,500 and serve for one year. His duties will include presenting public readings and workshops, participating at select public functions and creating at least one original activity to expand appreciation of the work of dramatists in literature. A schedule of the Laureate's 2012 activities will be posted in January on the sponsoring agency websites and on the Piedmont Laureate website at www.piedmontlaureate.com.
Finley studied theatre at the University of Utah and received an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. His work during that time focused on drama as a means of dialogue. Most notable was The Nature of the Nautilus, commissioned for a group of deaf actors to perform in sign language, which dealt with the controversy of cochlear implants (surgically implanted devices that provide a sense of sound to the deaf and hard of hearing). Following productions at the University of Utah and the Kennedy Center American College Theater gathering in Hayward, California, The Nature of the Nautilus was awarded the 2002 Jean Kennedy Smith Award for a play dealing with themes of disability.
Finley moved to Raleigh seven years ago, after graduate school. Working primarily with Burning Coal Theatre Company, he has brought more than 70 different stories from the area's history to life on stage through collaborations with Historic Oakwood Cemetery, the Mordecai House, Raleigh City Museum, the Town of Cary and other North Carolina organizations, focusing on his realization that relevant, effective drama is necessarily connected to place.
Applications for the Piedmont Laureate position were received from a four- county area. A selection committee, comprised of Allison Bergman (assistant director, University Theatre, NCSU), Howard Craft (Durham playwright and poet), Mark Perry (Dramatic Art Department lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill), and Catherine Rodgers (theatre director, Meredith College), as well as sponsoring agency representatives, reviewed all the applications and made recommendations.
For more information about the Piedmont Laureate program, visit
www.piedmontlaureate.com