The award-winning actor, writer and director will be in residence with the Hop this year.
While here to perform his sensational OTTO FRANK in the spring, Smith will visit with students and faculty from the Shabazz Center for Intellectual Inquiry, Hillel at Dartmouth and residential housing communities. He will also co-teach a segment of Associate Professor Monica White Ndounou's course Performing Histories, Performing Us, with a special focus on monologues and solo performances.
A long-time collaborator with the Hop, Smith has performed a number of his one-man shows at Dartmouth. Most recently, he took part in the Police Violence Symposium with a streaming version of his Bessie Award-winning Rodney King, directed by longtime colleague Spike Lee. He also performed Frederick Douglass Now as part of the 2018 International Black Theater Summit as well as his Obie award-winning A Huey P. Newton Story.
His history-infused work for the international stage includes studies of Christopher Columbus, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley, iconoclast artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Simon Rodia, and Charles White, and baseball greats Juan Marichal and John Roseboro. He has staged travelogues of Iceland, Panama, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami and New Orleans.
Also known for his collaborations with director Spike Lee, Smith has appeared in School Daze, Do the Right Thing, King of New York, Deep Cover, Panther, Malcolm X, Poetic Justice, Get On The Bus, Eve's Bayou, He Got Game, and Summer of Sam.
He has essayed portraits of Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington, NAACP secretary Walter White and Rosa Parks' husband and comrade, Raymond Parks.
Smith studied at Yale University and Occidental College and has taught at both institutions, as well as CalArts, directing his Performing History Workshop.