Smith went on to play seasons at the Mark Taper Forum, Mabou Mines, and the Actors ’ Theatre of Louisville. He developed his craft on the stage of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and at the New York Shakespeare festival playing Pinter, Ionesco, Shakespeare, and Dickens. Smith began his professional acting career in the mid 1980s. As he told Marianne Ruuth in Players, “I ’ve had the opportunity to be influential within Academia and yet maintain my independence as an artist. Although he eventually gave it up to enter the performing sphere full-time, Smith still teaches performance workshops from time to time, including stints at the University of California at Berkeley. His strong desire to instruct led to a year spent teaching English at Hollywood High in Los Angeles following graduate school. Law school had tempted Smith, as had the idea of teaching history at the college level. Acting finally got the best of him, however, and he transferred into and graduated from Yale ’s prestigious School of Drama. On returning home Smith went to Yale University, initially into their African American studies program. Watson fellowship allowed him to apprentice at the Keskidee Arts Centre, a small theater in London that was an African-Caribbean theater center. Now beginning to toy seriously with the idea of acting as a career, Smith applied for and won a fellowship to do theater abroad for a year. He attended Occidental College, a small private college in Los Angeles, from which he received a Bachelors degree in American Studies. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of Smith ’s work as an adult addresses the African American ’s position in society.Īs Smith sought his own place, he was drawn to acting, but was afraid he might not be able to make a living at it. His mother, from South Carolina, and his father, from Virginia, moved to California in order to find opportunities denied to them as blacks in the segregated south. Smith was the first of his family to be born outside of the South. As a writer, director, and actor, he is making an admirable place for himself in the theatrical world.īorn in Berkeley, CA, but raised in Los Angeles, Smith did not have the acting bug at first his interests were varied and ever changing. Without fail, the work he does aims at bringing the black experience into mainstream American entertainment. More importantly, when those roles are not immediately forthcoming, Smith creates his own. He is, however, an extremely well-respected actor who makes a point of accepting provocative roles in theater, television, and film. Roger Guenveur Smith is not a famous actor, nor would his face be readily recognized on the street.
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