Tommy Smith (playwright)
Encyclopedia
Early life
Born in Santa Monica, CaliforniaSanta Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
and raised in Gig Harbor, Washington
Gig Harbor, Washington
Gig Harbor is the name of both a bay on Puget Sound and a city on its shore in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 7,126 at the 2010 census....
, Smith moved to Seattle, WA in 1996. Initially an actor, Smith played roles at Intiman Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Jerry Manning and Managing Director Benjamin Moore...
, and others before working in the literary department at ACT Theatre
ACT Theatre
ACT Theatre is a regional, non-profit theatre organization in Seattle, Washington, USA. Gregory A. Falls founded ACT in 1965 and served as its first Artistic director; at the time ACT was founded he was also head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington...
. He began writing and adapting plays, winning the Artistic Pick at the 2001 Seattle Fringe Festival with his solo show version of Joe Wenderoth
Joe Wenderoth
Joe Wenderoth is an American poet, writer and professor. His work is widely anthologized, appearing in collections such as: The Anchor Book Of New American Short Stories, Isn't It Romantic, State of the Union, Poetry 180, The Next American Essay, The Best American Prose Poems: From Poe To Present,...
’s book Letters to Wendy’s.
New York Theatre
Smith in 2003 to perform as a “dwarf” (a supernumerary with no lines) in Richard ForemanRichard Foreman
Richard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
’s King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe. He was subsequently accepted into the The Juilliard School's Playwriting Program under Marsha Norman
Marsha Norman
Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play night, Mother...
and Christopher Durang
Christopher Durang
Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :...
. Upon his graduation, Smith was invited to The 2006 Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
National Playwrights Conference to develop his play Air Conditioning.
In 2007, Smith teamed with director May Adrales at the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab to developed the play White Hot, a darkly comic psychological drama. White Hot played at HERE Arts Center
HERE Arts Center
HERE Arts Center is a New York City based off-off broadway presenting house, founded in 1993, with two stages specializing in hybrid performance, dance, theater, multi-media and puppetry. From 1993-2009, HERE supported over 12,000 artists and served approximately 950,000 audience members...
in Summer 2007 and was subsequently published in the 2008 New York Theatre Review. The forward by playwright Craig Lucas
Craig Lucas
Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.-Biography:...
elucidates:
"[Tommy Smith] is writing in the shadow of our most daring and politically incendiary of martyred playwright saints, Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane was an English playwright. Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture — both physical and psychological — and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of...
and Edward Bond
Edward Bond
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...
... This is bleak terrain, a buried cesspool of self-loathing and unseemly, sadistic yearnings in love. The play can be read as a critique of the deadening fallout of our reactionary, materialistic, exploitative and soulless era. It can be read as a bad dream or a soap opera about the banality of evil. However you read it, it doesn’t go down easy."
Smith went on to work at a number of theatrical projects, including the Iraq war drama PTSD at Ensemble Studio Theatre
Ensemble Studio Theatre
The Ensemble Studio Theatre is a membership-based, developmental theatre located in New York City. It has a dual mission of nurturing individual theatre artists and developing new American plays.-Overview:...
, the choral composer play Sextet with Washington Ensemble Theatre and the book for the musical Goodnight Mecca (a country retelling of the rise of the Prophet Muhammad) with composer/singer Gabriel Kahane
Gabriel Kahane
Gabriel Kahane is an American composer and singer-songwriter living in New York City. He is best known for his 2006 piece, Craigslistlieder.-Biography:...
at the 2007 Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown Theatre Festival
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is a regional summer stock theatre on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant. The theatre was conceived as a way to use the Adams...
; Goodnight Mecca was subsequently featured in The New York Times' "2007 Year In Ideas". Smith wrote text for the multimedia theatre piece A Day In Dig Nation at Performance Space 122
Performance Space 122
Performance Space 122, generally known as P.S. 122, is a not-for-profit arts organization and one of the longest standing venues dedicated to contemporary performance art in New York City. Founded in 1979 in the abandoned Public School 122 building at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street in the East...
.
Currently, Smith is working on a play about Hasidic Jews called The Wife (his second collaboration with director May Adrales). Recently, Smith was awarded the 2010-11 PONY Fellowship at the Lark Play Development Center
Lark Play Development Center
The Lark Play Development Center is a non-profit organization that seeks to help playwrights improve and produce their plays. Headquartered in Manhattan, New York they function in countries throughout the world.- History :...
.
Collaborations with Reggie Watts
Starting in 2007, Smith began directing experimental multi-media theater with long-time friend and comedian/musician Reggie WattsReggie Watts
Reggie Watts is a Seattle-based comedian and musician. His shows are mostly improvised and consist of stream of consciousness stand-up in various shifting personae, mixed with loop pedal-based a cappella compositions. He also performs regularly on television, radio, and in live theater...
. They have generated four pieces, Transition, Disinformation, Radioplay and Dutch A/V. Filled with complex projected imagery by ex-Wooster Group video artist Joby Emmons, these pieces are born from Watts and Smith’s belief in Situationism, as they seek to bait viewers into a trance-like state via an assortment of linguistic and visual stage tricks.
Transition played at The Under the Radar Festival
Under the Radar Festival
The Under the Radar Festival is a theater festival in New York City, founded in 2005 by Mark Russell, former Artistic Director of P.S. 122 for over twenty years and also Guest Artistic Director for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival in 2006...
at The Public Theater, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon, United States was founded in 1996 by Kristy Edmunds, formerly the Director of the Portland Art Museum's "Art on the Edge" program...
’s Time Based Art Festival and On the Boards
On the Boards
On the Boards is a non-profit contemporary performing arts organization in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1978. Originally located at Washington Hall in the Central District, the organization moved in 1998 to their current location in Lower Queen Anne...
(Seattle). Disinformation was seen at the Under The Radar , PICA: TBA, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and ICA (Boston). Radioplay premiered at Ars Nova
Ars nova
Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377...
(New York), and played at Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Jerry Manning and Managing Director Benjamin Moore...
(Bumbershoot
Bumbershoot
Bumbershoot is an annual international music and arts festival held in Seattle, Washington. One of North America's largest such festivals, it takes place every Labor Day weekend at the 74-acre Seattle Center, which was built for the 1962 World's Fair. Seattle Center includes indoor theaters,...
), IRT Theater (New York) and Red House Arts Center
Red House Arts Center
Red House Arts Center is a nonprofit cultural center located at 201 West Street in Syracuse, New York near Armory Square. The mission of Red House is to transform lives through intimate and distinct experiences in the arts...
(Syracuse). Dutch A/V, a live environmental film performance, was workshopped at IRT Theater (New York).
A recording of their show Transition at On the Boards helped launch the first-ever live performance download website, OTBTV.