Tommy Smith
TOMMY SMITH is a playwright and screenwriter living between New York and Los Angeles. His incest drama Firemen recently won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best Production, Best Direction, Best Writing, Lead Performance, and Featured Performance; his revenging-hookers movie Sleeper Car is currently in production with director Guy Moshe and Dimension Films. More about Tommy is at smithsmith.wordpress.com.
In Dialogue
TALKING AMISH: JESSICA DICKEY AND SARAH CAMERON SUNDE WITH TOMMY SMITH
By Tommy SmithA man enters an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania. He releases the boys and young teacher, and keeps the girls. After being surrounded by the police, he shoots the girls and then himself.
In Dialogue
Resuscitating Carrie
LAWRENCE D. COHEN with Tommy Smith
Lawrence D. Cohen is the screenwriter of Brian De Palma’s legendary adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel Carrie and book writer to the equally infamous 1988 Broadway musical adaptation. The new version of the musical—staged by Stafford Arima with an entirely new cast and design team—is now playing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Trimming the Fat
Samuel D. Hunter with Tommy Smith
By Tommy Smith
Sam Hunter and I share a lot of things in common. We both graduated from the playwriting program at Juilliard. As recipients of the PONY Fellowship—a program that grants a writer a midtown living space for a year—we have lived in the same exact apartment, albeit in different years.
The Salad Days of Sheila Callaghan
By Tommy SmithSheila Callaghan is one of my favorite living playwrights. I can count these playwrights on one hand. In a theatrical landscape dominated by after-school specials, on-stage television pilots, exposés of rich families, and nonsense musicals, Callaghan’s work eschews any category.
In Dialogue
Shifting Shape:
Ironbound’s Martyna Majok
By Tommy Smith
After enduring the post-graduate wasteland, Martyna Majok hit the theater scene this year with three major coups: a production of her play Ironbound at Rattlestick (in collaboration with Women’s Project) starring Marin Ireland, a playwriting fellowship at the Juilliard School, and a residency with The Playwrights of New York (PoNY), an organization that provides a year-long apartment in Midtown and a generous monthly stipend.
In Dialogue
Snap Crackle Pop: Dancing in Richard Foreman’s Brain
By Tommy SmithHaving never seen a production of his, I moved from Seattle and signed on to be a “dwarf” (i.e. the Ontological Theatre’s unofficial lingo for non-speaking non-Equity role) in 2004’s King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe.
In Memory: Harold Pinter
By Cristina Pippa, Jason Grote, Lonnie Carter, George Hunka, Tommy Smith, John Soltes, Lydia Stryk, Caridad Svich, Aurin Squire, and Alexis ClementsHarold Pinter was an inspiration—if not a model—for many theater artists working today. What follows is just a small sample of the ways Pinter's work has influenced us all.
Pushing Buttons: An interview with playwright THOMAS BRADSHAW about Purity
By Tommy Smith“If we had three cookies in front of us,” Bradshaw motions to the empty table, “I would be polite and say you should have the last cookie. But deep down, I really want the cookie.”
The Perfect Mix: Assembling Angela’s Mixtape: Playwright Eisa Davis with Tommy Smith
By Tommy Smith"The play is about the Angela Davis I knew from growing up with her until I was about 19," says Eisa Davis.
