Tommy Smith (playwright)

Tommy Smith is a New York-based playwright/director.

Born in Santa Monica, California and raised in Gig Harbor, Washington, Smith moved to Seattle, WA in 1996. Initially an actor, Smith played roles at Intiman Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and others before working in the literary department at ACT Theatre. He began writing and adapting plays, winning the Artistic Pick at the 2001 Seattle Fringe Festival with his solo show version of Joe Wenderoth’s book Letters to Wendy’s, directed by Austin Elston.

In 2004, Smith performed as a “dwarf” (a supernumerary with no lines) in Richard Foreman’s King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe. He was subsequently accepted into the The Juilliard School's Playwriting Program under Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. Upon his graduation, Smith was invited to The 2006 Eugene O'Neill 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 develop the play White Hot, a darkly comic psychological drama. White Hot played at HERE Arts Center in summer 2007 and was subsequently published in the 2008 New York Theatre Review. The forward by playwright Craig Lucas elucidates:

"[Tommy Smith] is writing in the shadow of our most daring and politically incendiary of martyred playwright saints, Sarah Kane and Edward Bond ... 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."

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