Kenley Smith

Kenley Smith

Kenley Smith lives and writes in Nashville, TN. He is director of Tennessee Playwrights Studio, a developmental lab for in-state dramatists. He was formerly an associate artist and facilitator of The Writing Room at Nashville Repertory Theatre.

Kenley founded Studio Roanoke, a not-for-profit Virginia theatre that specialized in the development and production of new works from 2009 to 2012. He...
Kenley Smith lives and writes in Nashville, TN. He is director of Tennessee Playwrights Studio, a developmental lab for in-state dramatists. He was formerly an associate artist and facilitator of The Writing Room at Nashville Repertory Theatre.

Kenley founded Studio Roanoke, a not-for-profit Virginia theatre that specialized in the development and production of new works from 2009 to 2012. He was an Ingram playwright-in-residence at Nashville Rep for the 2011-12 season.

His full-length play, "Akuma-Shin," premiered in Los Angeles in March and was a MainStage selection of the 2015 Great Plains Theatre Conference. Kenley's “Empires of Eternal Void" was developed through the Rep’s Ingram New Works Lab and was a MainStage Selection at the 2013 GPTC. “Devil Sedan” also was featured in 2008 at GPTC and has been produced in Omaha, Roanoke, Nashville and Chicago. “Devil Sedan” won first place at the Barter Theatre’s 2008 Festival of Appalachian Plays and Playwrights and took top honors in the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Joe McCabe Memorial Playwriting Competition in 2009.

In addition to several readings, Kenley directed two full-length plays at Studio Roanoke – his own “The Brand New Testament” and Ben R. Williams’ “Man With Wings.”

Kenley’s fiction has won contests sponsored by Mountain State Press and the Abingdon (VA) Highlands Festival. From 1989 to 2000, he was president and chief instructor of Car Guys, Inc., a firm that teaches high-performance driving techniques.

Kenley earned an M.F.A. in Playwriting and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing, both from Hollins University. He has taught playwriting at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA, and at the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference.

Plays

  • Maidens by Kenley Smith
    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic + 5 more
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    Keyword: World War II, Holocaust + 8 more
    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, period, political, tragedy
    Keyword: World War II, Holocaust, Nazi, concentration camp, war crimes, women prison guards, Poland, Gdansk, Danzig, Stutthof
    Jozef, a 10-year-old boy in Gdansk, Poland, has an odd souvenir -- a woman’s shoe. It comes from a hill called Biskupia Gorka, where he has witnessed something on a warm July day that he’ll never forget.

    In the spring of 1946, five SS Aufseherinnen (female guards) from the Stutthof concentration camp are sentenced to death by a Soviet/Polish tribunal. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, infamous for her...
    Jozef, a 10-year-old boy in Gdansk, Poland, has an odd souvenir -- a woman’s shoe. It comes from a hill called Biskupia Gorka, where he has witnessed something on a warm July day that he’ll never forget.

    In the spring of 1946, five SS Aufseherinnen (female guards) from the Stutthof concentration camp are sentenced to death by a Soviet/Polish tribunal. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, infamous for her cruelty and known as the “Beautiful Spectre” by the camp inmates, shares a cell block with 22-year-old Elisabeth Becker; together, they wait out the five weeks until they are scheduled to hang. Elisabeth maintains her innocence and enlists the help of Lech, a Polish guard, to begin crafting a letter-writing campaign to the President of Poland. Jenny, who knows Lech from his previous job, uses that information as leverage to begin a project of her own.
  • Fan Me With a Brick: The Story of an American Family by Kenley Smith
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    11–22
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    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic + 2 more
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    Keyword: Eugenics, based on a true story + 2 more
    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic, drama, period
    Keyword: Eugenics, based on a true story, African American women, black history
    When Victoria sets out to learn more of her family’s history, she opens a portal to a past full of loss, pain and indomitable perseverance. Her mother reluctantly joins her, and the two women uncover old wounds — a scandalous affair in segregated Virginia, a stolen child, a lost parent, a horrific accident — that linger unhealed in the present. The play is based on actual events. Original research by Yalewa Sparrowhawk.
  • Devil Sedan by Kenley Smith
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    10–14
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 2 more
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    Keyword: murder, crime + 7 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, mystery/thriller, tragedy
    Keyword: murder, crime, Death Penalty, capital punishment, christianity, LGBTQ, southern gothic, Christian fundamentalism, mystery
    One shotgun blast. Two young women. Two brothers. Four lives fatally intertwined. "Devil Sedan" unfolds as a tale of defied expectation, a journey into the deepest mysteries of faith and duty.
  • Akuma-shin by Kenley Smith
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    11–15
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 6 more
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    Keyword: monster, Tokyo + 6 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, horror, period, political, satire, science fiction
    Keyword: monster, Tokyo, kaiju, Race, Japan, Alternate history, Yukio Mishima, asian
    In 1956, an enormous monster destroys Tokyo. A broadcasting crew, a famous Japanese author and an American Air Force general face the initial attack. Many years later, the event still sends ripples through the psyches of two nations that must cope with legacies of loss, fear and hatred.
  • Empires of Eternal Void by Kenley Smith
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 2 more
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    Keyword: interrogation, Torture + 5 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, mystery/thriller, political
    Keyword: interrogation, Torture, war, PTSD, atrocities, military, Crisis of Faith
    Locked in a transparent cell with a seemingly delusional young soldier, a military chaplain attempts to learn the truth about a violent, shocking crime. But as the session unfolds, punctuated by threats and even torture, the chaplain's sense of reality begins to shift. Are the prisoner's conversations with God the ravings of a disturbed soul, or the revelations of an enlightened one?
  • Rats Love the Taste by Kenley Smith
    Cast: 
    6–12
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 3 more
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    Keyword: black lives matter, Police Shooting + 5 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, fable/folktale, political, tragedy
    Keyword: black lives matter, Police Shooting, appalachia, West Virginia, family, protest, Coal
    West Virginia always gets the short end of the stick, Big E says. He’s not feeling so great himself — his neighbor’s a jerk, his son gets into fights, his daughter dates a black guy, and those disability checks aren't such a sure thing these days. And as the cops show up, Big E starts to realize that in the gunfight of life, he’s holding a goddamn pocket knife. With ol’ John Henry himself — hammer and all...
    West Virginia always gets the short end of the stick, Big E says. He’s not feeling so great himself — his neighbor’s a jerk, his son gets into fights, his daughter dates a black guy, and those disability checks aren't such a sure thing these days. And as the cops show up, Big E starts to realize that in the gunfight of life, he’s holding a goddamn pocket knife. With ol’ John Henry himself — hammer and all — rising from the staircase, West Virginia becomes an altered state in which folklore and a turbulent past collide with a desperate, screwed-up present.
  • The Shade of the Trees by Kenley Smith
    Cast: 
    7–9
    ·
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 3 more
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    Keyword: Civil War, slavery + 5 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, period, tragedy, young audiences
    Keyword: Civil War, slavery, Emancipation Proclamation, appalachia, Virginia, literacy, race relations
    THE SHADE OF THE TREES follows a family's oral history, generation through generation, over almost 150 years. In the present day, a storyteller recalls childhood stories told by a grandfather in Virginia. That grandfather becomes a boy, circa 1930, who listens to his grandmother's first-person tales of the Civil War. As her stories come to life, we see a 12-year-old girl who aids a young runaway slave...
    THE SHADE OF THE TREES follows a family's oral history, generation through generation, over almost 150 years. In the present day, a storyteller recalls childhood stories told by a grandfather in Virginia. That grandfather becomes a boy, circa 1930, who listens to his grandmother's first-person tales of the Civil War. As her stories come to life, we see a 12-year-old girl who aids a young runaway slave and discovers that she must choose between loyalty to her new friend and her perceived duty to her society.
  • We Are All Angels of God by Kenley Smith
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama, political + 1 more
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    Keyword: school shooting, gun violence + 1 more
    Genre: drama, political, tragedy
    Keyword: school shooting, gun violence, guns
    Two college students take shelter as a gunman stalks their classroom building. The play was written on 4/16/2007, hours after the Virginia Tech shootings.