Michael Townsend Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Townsend Smith (born October 5, 1935) is an American playwright, theatre director, impresario, critic, and lighting designer.
Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and received his primary education in Kansas City. He then went to the Hotchkiss School and to Yale University.
He was a theatre critic for The Village Voice during the 1960s and early 1970s, and was active in the development of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in New York City. He also worked as a director, playwright, and lighting designer during this time. Smith directed early works by Sam Shepard, Ronald Tavel, María Irene Fornés, Emanuel Peluso, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Soren Agenoux, H. M. Koutoukas, and William M. Hoffman, and others.[1] He also directed some of his own plays, and works by Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Christopher Fry, and Gertrude Stein.
During the 1960s, Smith interviewed Wolfgang Zuckermann, noted manufacturer and scholar of harpsichords, for The Village Voice. They became friends and collaborated on projects in the performing arts. These projects included the Sundance Festival of Chamber Arts, a performing arts festival in rural Pennsylvania, and an unsuccessful attempt to revive the Caffe Cino, an early off-off-Broadway theater located near Zuckermann's workshop in Greenwich Village.[2] In the 1980s, Smith himself began to make harpsichords and fortepianos.
In the 1990s, Smith was the editor of Santa Barbara Magazine and founded Genesis West, a theatre company in Santa Barbara. They presented Smith's own plays and plays by Shepard, Fornes, and George F. Walker. He also worked as the arts editor of the Santa Barbara Independent and the music and dance critic for the Santa Barbara News-Press. In 2003, he moved to Silverton, Oregon, where he is affiliated with the Brush Creek Playhouse.
