Louise Smith

In the past almost- 35 years, I’ve made roughly 15 solos and three duets. Highlights include performing Sacrificium Intellectus at the Archetype Gallery in Dayton Ohio, One Don’t Operate Without the Other at Cincinnati Contemporary Dance; Interfacing Joan at the International Theater Festival in El Salvador, and LaMama E.T.C.; White/Man/Fever at Actor’s Theater Louisville’s inaugural Flying Solo Festival, St. Mark’s Danspace and Theatre X Milwaukee; Donkeyskin at the Illusion Theater, Minneapolis; The House of the Mighty Mother at Dance Theater Workshop NYC ; Palaver with Peggy Pettit at PS 122 NYC and Gold with John Fleming at Downtown Arts, Illusion Theater and Antioch College. As an actor, I have performed with several companies and artists including Ann Bogart, Talking Band...

In the past almost- 35 years, I’ve made roughly 15 solos and three duets. Highlights include performing Sacrificium Intellectus at the Archetype Gallery in Dayton Ohio, One Don’t Operate Without the Other at Cincinnati Contemporary Dance; Interfacing Joan at the International Theater Festival in El Salvador, and LaMama E.T.C.; White/Man/Fever at Actor’s Theater Louisville’s inaugural Flying Solo Festival, St. Mark’s Danspace and Theatre X Milwaukee; Donkeyskin at the Illusion Theater, Minneapolis; The House of the Mighty Mother at Dance Theater Workshop NYC ; Palaver with Peggy Pettit at PS 122 NYC and Gold with John Fleming at Downtown Arts, Illusion Theater and Antioch College. As an actor, I have performed with several companies and artists including Ann Bogart, Talking Band, Julie Taymor, Meredith Monk. I’ve worked at the Manhattan Theater Club, New York Theater Workshop, the Joyce Theater, BAM, Theater for a New Audience, Public Theater, Milwaukee Rep, Seattle Group Theater, and in numerous national and international venues. I was a member of Ping Chong and Company for 11 years and continue to collaborate with the Talking Band. My film credits include Gravel, a short by Steven Bognar; and Working Girls, directed by Lizzie Borden.

My awards and honors include a 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Award in Playwriting. As an educator and therapist I was given a 2016 Service Award from the Southeastern Ohio Collaborative for Higher Education and an Employee- of- the- month award at the community mental health agency where I worked in 2008-09. Past awards include a Jerome Fellowship at the Minneapolis Playwright’s Center and another Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Award for Interdisciplinary Arts.While acting in New York City for sixteen years, I was the recipient of a Bessie Award for Ping Chong’s Brightness in 1992 and in 2004 I won an Obie Award as part of the company of Painted Snake in a Painted Chair by the Talking Band. I have also been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Collaborative Artist Fellowship with Ping Chong for my piece Interfacing Joan. For my part in Working Girls, I was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award at the New York Film Festival. Additional grants include Art Matters, NYSCA, and Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fellowship. In 2019, I performed two new works: DOROTHY LANE: a Travelogue, and THE SYMPATHY OF ALL THINGS- a site specific work at the Agraria for Regenerative Practice. In October, I was in residence at the Corporation of Yaddo.

Education: My B.A. is in theater from Antioch College in 1977. I also studied at The Drama Studio in London for a year while an Antioch student. I studied acting for two years at the William Esper Studio NYC before relocating to Ohio in 1994 to teach. There I got an Independent Masters of Arts in Playwriting at Antioch University in 1998. In 2004 I graduated from University of Dayton with a degree in Community Counseling with clinical licensure, and in 2008 I finished a two -year certificate program at the Jung Institute in Chicago.

Employment: My current position at Antioch College is Associate Professor of Performance. I have had this position for four years. Prior to that, I was Dean of Community Life for three years during the re-opening of the college after its closure in 2008. From 2008-2011 I worked as a mental health therapist in community mental health settings in the cities of Dayton and Springfield Ohio. I still work part time as a therapist in a large private practice in my town. At Antioch I teach classes like Writing and Performing the Self and Improvisation in Art and Life.

Scripts

Dorothy Lane: A Travelogue

by Louise Smith

1

Cast Size

1—2

Genre

experimental

Dorothy Lane is a solo performance/travelogue that chronicles a year in the life of a therapist working with people with schizophrenia in Dayton Ohio.
Dorothy Lane is a thoroughfare in suburban of Dayton, Ohio. At one end of Dorothy Lane is a General Motors truck plant that was closed in 2008 and laid off hundreds of workers in the area. The region has still not recovered from the recession. On the other end of...

Dorothy Lane is a solo performance/travelogue that chronicles a year in the life of a therapist working with people with schizophrenia in Dayton Ohio.
Dorothy Lane is a thoroughfare in suburban of Dayton, Ohio. At one end of Dorothy Lane is a General Motors truck plant that was closed in 2008 and laid off hundreds of workers in the area. The region has still not recovered from the recession. On the other end of Dorothy Lane is a shopping mall called The Green, a “Truman Show”-esque simulacrum of small town America with exclusive shops and a “town square”. I am interested in locating my clients within the larger reality of economic disparity, invisibility and denial. Their stories are situated as sites within the city, as I drive from place to place visiting them.
I call this piece a “Travelogue” because I see the disconnected piece of community mirrored in the psychic condition of schizophrenia and vice versa. I am also keenly aware that within madness there can be wisdom, but it is dangerous to romanticize the experience of living with a major mental illness. Today, when we are in a conversation about mental illness and violence, I am concerned that the stigma grows against the mentally ill. Mental illness becomes a blind for the deeper issues of racism, sexism and homophobia as well as misguided national policies on guns and inappropriate promotion of second amendment rights that are undergirded by white supremacy.
Within the piece is my own story, as a survivor of suicide. My story is not in the foreground of the work but rather situates me as the storyteller.

Two Water Plays: Monofin and Water is the Blood of Earth

by Louise Smith

Cast Size

1—3

Genre

experimental

The element of water is a matrix for change and challenge. In Monofin, a diver, who is a woman, challenges herself to go into the depths without an oxygen tank, defying her own capacity for breath and all rational motivation. In Water is the Blood of Earth, two women encounter each other in a foreign country, both seeking answers. One is a scientist, the other an artist. They look at the world differently and...

The element of water is a matrix for change and challenge. In Monofin, a diver, who is a woman, challenges herself to go into the depths without an oxygen tank, defying her own capacity for breath and all rational motivation. In Water is the Blood of Earth, two women encounter each other in a foreign country, both seeking answers. One is a scientist, the other an artist. They look at the world differently and yet their experience is mediated by the complete unfamiliarity of the land in which they find themselves.