Every fall, Burning Coal Theatre presents a series of short plays from Raleigh and Triangle playwrights as outdoor theatre.
From the Ground Up, written and directed by Robert Kaufman, introduces audiences to the men and women who laid the groundwork for Raleigh’s vibrant arts scene that we know today!
Burning Coal’s 2026 Oakwood Cemetery Series presents
From the Ground Up, by Robert Kaufman
Wouldn’t you like to know if the dead were talking about you? Or, how about listening to whatever it is they talk about? Well here’s your chance. Come see and hear some of Raleigh’s most celebrated artists talk about what happened both before and after they died. You may recognize some names! All the people named in this show were real and are buried here, in the Historic Oakwood Cemetery. This will be a most enlightening experience!
Every fall, Burning Coal Theatre partners with the historic Oakwood Cemetery to present a plays based on the lives of people buried in the Oakwood Cemetery, their partners, neighbors, associates and nemeses’.
The historic figures represented in our plays are selected through annual recommendations from the cemetery’s historians. When writing the plays, we aim to create characters based closely on historical evidence with an objective of educating the public about Raleigh’s local history. Playwrights will also include fictional elements to support their story.
Playwrights from around the Triangle and sometimes beyond will craft these short plays that look at the comical, the tragic, the dastardly and the utterly heroic lives of those who came before and upon whose shoulders, for better and for worse, the Capital City was built.
Read more about the 2024 Oakwood Series in this article published in Midtown Magazine:
“Bringing Them Home and Burning Coal’s Oakwood Cemetery Series”, by Elizabeth Brignac
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