Burning Coal Theatre Company Presents Business Speak Acting Class, 5/7-28

Burning Coal Theatre Company presents BUSINESS SPEAK - How Business People Can Use the Tools of an Actor's Trade, a four week class that presents the non-actor with the fundamental tools of the actor's trade: confidence, articulation, improvisation, and how to concisely convey ideas, using your voice and your body.  Burning Coal Theatre Company's Artistic Director, Jerome Davis, and Education Director Ian Finley will teach this class on the art of public speaking. Dates and times are May 7- May 28, 2012, Mondays from 6:30-9:30 pm. The class costs $120, due at the first class.  Classes will take place at the Murphey School, 224 Polk Street, Raleigh, NC.  For further information, visit www.burningcoal.org. To register, call 919-834-4001.

Jerome Davis founded Burning Coal in 1995.  He has directed numerous productions for the company over the years, including "Year's Best" productions of Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca, David Edgar's The Prisoner's Dilemma and The Shape of the Table (American premieres).  He recently directed a production of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten for the North Carolina Opera.  He has acted or studied with Ellen Burstyn, Uta Hagen, Richard Jenkins, Ben Gazzarra, Hope Davis, Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet, Richard Jenkins, Adrian Hall and Ralph Waite at theatres across the United States.

Ian Finley, Burning Coal's education director for the last eight years, is current Piedmont Laureate for central North Carolina.  He holds an MFA in playwriting from New York University and has taught at Playwrights' Horizons in New York and at SMU in Dallas, as well as a Burning Coal.