By Patrice Wilson

Playwright Ruth Sloane is a distinguished thespian, dramatist, and poet who has been contributing to and growing with the Charlotte creative community for over three decades.

“I’ve always been an artist creating something,” said Sloane, a 2022 ASC Creative Renewal Fellowship recipient. “Music was my first expression. I was so focused on music growing up and I had the opportunity to sing all around the western world.”

When she wasn’t studying music or taking her voice and piano lessons, Sloane found time to express herself and write about the things she loved.

She started writing plays in junior high school. As a student at West Charlotte High School, a favorite writing spot was underneath a stairwell positioned in front of the office.

“I didn’t play basketball, but I loved the sport, so I wrote about basketball,” she said.

It wasn’t until college that she had her first playwriting class. Though Sloane spent much of her formative years studying music, she felt that there was another way to best express herself creatively. And, after her first playwriting class in college, she found a home in theater.

“I was so focused on my voice and piano lessons that I didn’t think to be a playwright,” she said. “Theater is a combination of every art form that exists on the globe, you have dialogue, monologue, music, visual arts and more.”

Throughout her abundant career, Sloane has written eight commissioned plays both locally and nationally, taught 50 courses on playwriting and completed multiple playwrighting residencies.

Notably, Sloane researched and wrote the play “Second City” depicting the 100-year history of Charlotte’s Black community—known as Brooklyn—that debuted in 1996 with Charlotte’s longest-running community theater, Theatre Charlotte. The Mint Museum commissioned Sloane in 2003 to write the play “Romare Bearden 1911–1988,” depicting the life of Charlotte-born artist Romare Bearden. In July, Sloane directed “Crowns,” a Broadway play that explores the relationship of hats (crowns), history, and tradition in Black culture.

Through her Creative Renewal Fellowship, Sloane will travel to Ghana to explore, study and create dramatic narratives. She will learn from master Ghanian playwrights, observe storytellers who perform oral African traditions and make cross-cultural connections that will allow her to show the resiliency of the African spirit in her work.

“I am truly grateful for the Arts & Science Council giving me the opportunity to create,” she said. “This fellowship will make it possible for me to creatively show that we are not descendants of slaves but descendants of African survivors.”

This fellowship is especially important because it gives Sloane an opportunity to reconnect with her ancestry through her own art.

“My family has always known that we came from West African countries surrounding Ghana,” she said. “So, this will be an awakening for me—working with artist in Ghana will be a crowning experience.”

After supporting the historical and creative landscape of Charlotte for decades, Sloane is now being supported by ASC to make history of her own and be empowered as she continues to create.

“The Arts & Science Council has done something remarkable in my life,” reflected Sloane. “For the first in a long time, I will be able to do my own artistic work.”