Bio

Ilene Fins, an actor/director, teaching artist and applied theatre facilitator, has worked in SC since 2015. She is a professor of theatre at Midlands Technical College. From 2010 to 2015 she was a professor of theatre at Polk State College in Lakeland, Fla., where she directed many productions including the award-winning Brighton Beach Memoirs and Anna in the Tropics. She also created “All Kids Read with Polk State College,” a literacy outreach program that brings college students together with elementary students in a performance experience that inspires enthusiasm for reading. 

She initiated the performance program on the Lakeland campus with the live theatrical performances of Almost, Maine, There is a Field, and The Poe Project: A Midnight Dreary. 

Ilene is the former dean of theatre at Harrison School for the Arts in Lakeland, where she was a Polk County finalist for Teacher of the Year in 2008.  While at Harrison, she was known for her innovative staging of such classic theatrical literature as, Lear, Inc. (an adaptation of King Lear), As You Like It and South Pacific. 

Prior to moving to Florida in 2005 she worked as a professional director, teaching artist and actor. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and has performed at ACT Theatre under the direction of Gordon Edelstein (Long Wharf Theatre, Conn.) and Theater Schmeater, among others, in Seattle, Washington, in addition to theatres across the Midwest and Southeast. 

She holds a master of fine arts in acting/directing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Ilene's work as a senior faculty member of the Seattle Children’s Theatre Drama School brought her critical acclaim as a director and instructor of acting and stage combat for 15 years. 

While in Seattle, she began touring with Book-It All Over as an actor in 1996 and continued as a teaching artist with their residency program.  She continues to use their activated narrative performance techniques today in her literacy outreach work. 

Prior to her move to Seattle in 1993, Ilene was a resident actor and education director at TRUSTUS Theatre in South Carolina.  She has toured nationally with ArtReach Touring Theatre, formerly of Cincinnati, Ohio.