PLAYWRIGHT
CHARLES SMITH THE IRT HAS PREVIOUSLY COMMISSIONED AND PRODUCED THREE PLAYS BY CHARLES SMITH: LES TROIS DUMAS, SISTER CARRIE, AND THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JAMES. THE RECLAMATION OF MADISON HEMINGS, COMMISSIONED BY THE GOODMAN THEATRE, IS CHARLES’S FOURTH WORLD PREMIERE AT THE IRT.
HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTERESTED IN WRITING? use a library. I would literally walk in, and see the first row, and start I was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. I’m very proud of that. I read a Claude Brown novel, Manchild in the Promised Land, when I was in fifth grade. It was extraordinary: it spoke to my life, it spoke to my neighborhood and everybody I knew, I recognized people in that novel. What made it so extraordinary was that in the Chicago Public School System at that time, we weren’t reading anything like that. We were reading Shane, we were reading Lassie Come Home; for me, those books were like reading about people on a different planet. We were told that if we got caught reading Manchild in the Promised Land, we would be suspended. It was banned. The novel was contraband: we were passing it around, and everybody knew who had it. I read it, and it was great, and I became very interested in story. The school system’s idea of story, I was not interested in, because of how we were treated. It wasn’t really about learning. It was about do this and be this way, versus an exploration of how we were thinking. I can remember asking questions in class, and the teacher saying, “That’s a stupid question. What are you talking about?” So the school system and I didn’t get along, and I left when I was a sophomore. I was still trying to read, but I didn’t know how to
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reading titles. I didn’t know it was separated in sections, and I would just stumble around until I found something that was interesting. I was working in the Chicago factories, and then I went into the Army. As we were shipping out for South Korea, there was a table, and there were Bibles and other books. I picked up The Iliad, and it blew my mind. I thought, this is just like Manchild in the Promised Land—exactly like it. Even though it’s not set in Harlem—the epic quality, the size, the scope, what was going on, the challenges—for me, it was exactly like Manchild in the Promised Land. While I was in Korea, they were offering a class on The Iliad, and I thought, man, I’ve got to take this, because I’ve got to find other stuff like this. But they wouldn’t let me take it because I was a high school drop-out and it was a college course. So I took the GED and I passed it. I got into that course, I took Shakespeare, I took Chaucer. When I got out of the Army, I thought, well maybe school is for me. I went to the community college to continue my exploration of Shakespeare and Chaucer. I discovered that from where I was now, the stuff they were offering was very elementary. So I took a theatre course, and the professor asked me if I could act. I said “I don’t know, I’ve never been in a play. I have never seen a play.” He put me in The Runner Stumbles: I was the jailor. I had two lines,
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