Our Editor-in Chief, Richard Beck, interviews Stephen Smith about his years since graduation and in what turns out to be a story of love, determination and passion for embracing all that theatre has to offer if you are prepared to put in the work and have the imagination.
You trained at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) which I think has had a lasting impression on you.
LIPA was a fantastic experience. Sure it was a rollercoaster, and some lessons you don’t realise you’ve learnt until many years after. But I now proudly sing LIPA’s praises at careers fairs, when I’m free, as I feel that what the school and the city of Liverpool gives artists is a wonderful alternative to London training. In my first few years of applying for drama schools, I only really applied for the London ones; I’m originally from Watford, so just outside London. I kept getting recalls and final rounds, but never getting in. In my fourth year of applying to drama school, I tried out LIPA and they accepted me.
I fell in love with the city - the people of Liverpool are wonderful and I now think of it as almost like a second home. It’s a place very close to my heart. During my training, I like to say that LIPA taught me the business side of show business. We were challenged to create our own work, and this has served me well since graduating in 2017. Although I left LIPA signed to an agency, I’ve actually never needed an agent because I’ve been so busy creating my own acting opportunities under Threedumb Theatre, or finding acting gigs through my own networking.
Tell us about Threedumb Theatre.
It's the company that three of us started at LIPA. The name was a play on the word Freedom, as creating our own work allowed us creative freedom when moving forward into the industry. Three, because there were three of us, and dumb, because at the time we were just starting out and felt somewhat foolish in our producing endeavours! However our first play - Stephen MacDonald’s First World War drama Not About Heroes, where I played Wilfred Owen - toured with great success and I also enjoyed the process of creating marketing materials and even the entrepreneurial aspects of running a theatre company.
LIPA is also highly supportive of its alumni, so perhaps it’s time for the Six Plays One Day story now.
Yes, LIPA have a great support system for their graduates, and can even offer financial support for those who submit suitable funding bids, and especially for LIPA-led work. We were fortunate to be granted ‘LIPA Enterprise Funding’ for the development of Six Plays One Day. This was a day-long play festival that we used to host at the Tristan Bates Theatre (which is now the Seven Dials Playhouse), and it acted as almost a mini EdFringe, with back-to-back shows throughout the afternoon and evening. The Tristan Bates made a fortune from bar takings alone!
It’s a pity that the festival is still in need of a new home, since the pandemic; we still have Enterprise funding from LIPA to ensure another year goes ahead. And as a side note, I personally have found immense joy in supporting other LIPA graduates and go out of my way to either see their work when performing, or to realise their shows by producing them under Threedumb Theatre. As far as I’m concerned, their success is my success. From Six Plays One Day, we have produced an award-winning run of a solo shows at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre; Jack Hesketh’s Am I Happy Yet? and over the years, since it’s appearance at Six Plays One Day in 2019, Julia Thurston’s Paved with Gold and Ashes has gone from strength to strength. We took it to Edinburgh Fringe in 2023; then it was programmed at Barons Court Theatre earlier this year, where it not only was nominated for several OFFIE awards, but Julia’s playtext has now officially been published - her first published play!
A play that’s dropped off the current cycle is Dog/Actor, but was that the one that started your international career, because you've now done several overseas trips.
Yes, my current cycle of solo shows doesn’t feature Dog/Actor, but this was the solo show that started them all, really. I It's actually two shows in one: Dog and Actor by Steven Berkoff. I first presented them at at the Watford Fringe Festival in 2018. This was my first crack at self-directing a solo show. I then programmed it as one of our Six Plays in 2019, and The Junction theatre in Dubai heard about its quality (and probably how easy it was to get over, as it’s just me, no set, no props). They flew me and the show over for a run in Dubai in April 2019, and due to the rapturous response it got from the audiences (none of whom I had ever met before), I realised that the show was good enough to develop further. Not only that, but I had unintentionally created a show that could be performed anywhere, and one that I could fit in a single suitcase. Upon returning to the UK, I immediately booked a How to Tour Your Show workshop with Mark Makin (who coincidentally was Steven Berkoff’s tour booker, once upon a time), and started the process of booking my own UK schools and theatres tour for the summer of 2020. By January 2020, I had a 17-venue tour lined up throughout June and July of that year. But then the pandemic hit, and so, everything was postponed. However, in 2022, I rebooked half of my 2020 UK venues, toured the show to great success with my brother David operating most of the shows, and we even took it to the Edinburgh Frige for a week. From the Edinburgh run, Dog/Actor was booked for a runs in Malaysia and Norway, and also won an OFFIE award at the 2023 Off West End ceremony.
I hope it’s going to make a comeback.
Well, I would love to bring it back again. Unfortunately, the more I perform it, the more expensive the performance rights get, to the point where it simply doesn’t make any financial sense to put on the show, unless funding is acquired.
We staged Berkoff's solo play, Harry’s Christmas, in December 2022 at the Kings Head Theatre, I would love one day to present a triple-bill of Berkoff. That production raised £1k for our chosen mental health charity, CALM, and we garnered so many amazing reviews that Steven Berkoff himself came to see the show! I was somewhat terrified, but during the first scene, I caught a glimpse of him in the audience, and he had a beaming smile on his face. I met him and his wife after the show, and he was nothing but full of kind words for the show, my performance, and he said that we should work together one day. I’m still waiting for the email! If he liked Harry’s Christmas, I just know he’d love Dog/Actor, which he still hasn’t seen.
So yes, I do sincerely hope to stage Dog/Actor again, when the time is right. I may have to rethink the aesthetics of the first character in ‘Dog’ - who I’ve always played as a skinhead, and therefore always shaved my head down to the brim whenever I put on the show. I would like to find a way to keep my hair, however, so next time I’m going to experiment with changing the soundtrack and look of Dog - from the anarchy of Thatcher’s Britain, to a 90’s chav look, with track suits to match, alongside a much more dubby, rave, modern soundtrack. This means I can keep my hair long(ish), which won’t limit my look as an actor, for other work, and my other solo shows. Plus my wife isn’t a huge fan of the neo Nazi look…!
Cue your recent marriage to Stephanie, who is a performer in her own right, a key figure in the background of all you do.
Yes - recently married! Feeling incredibly grounded and grateful to have my wife, Stephanie, supporting me. She is my best friend and has been a shining beacon of inspiration, and has changed my life and lifestyle for the best. And it’s only the beginning! Her full name is Stephanie Van Driesen, and I mention this because she is an incredible actress, originally from Malaysia. She has a remarkable background in musical theatre, and was the Malaysian equivalent to a West End star. She was instrumental in getting my first Southeast Asian gig - first of many, I reckon. This summer, we are partnering up at the Edinburgh Fringe - with 36 performances over 23 days! She’ll be operating the sound and lights for all the shows, while I’ll be performing them.
If we go back a little to the lockdown years. Many actors I think were at a loss during that period, but you seem to have taken a more Shakespearian approach to the time on your hands. He famously wrote five plays when the plague closed everything down and you took on what became a quartet of works by Edgar Allan Poe.
Lockdown was tough, a confusing time, and I felt creatively stifled, as did many people. As I have said already, I had booked a huge 17-stop tour of Dog/Actor for the summer of 2020, all by myself, and I really thought that 2020 was going to be 'my year!' Each email that came through saying that the booking would be postponed for an unknown period of time, was like another sucker punch to the gut. But I soon found perspective in the situation, and it wasn’t like it was only happening to me. Everyone was in the same boat, and there was no point shaking fists to the sky saying “WHY?!!!”. Nevertheless, I felt vulnerable during the lockdowns - this and the lack of any structure to my schedule; the inability to make any long term plans; made me feel like a child again. And so, I went headlong back into my childhood fascinations and obsessions of classical literature and gothic horror. The lockdowns gave me time to reflect on the reasons why I became interested in acting in the first place, and it was because of vintage horror movie actors like Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Lon Chaney’s nickname in the business was ‘The Man of A Thousand Faces’, as he was such a physical chameleon and a ground-breaking make-up artist.
Some of these classic horror films, that I had always adored, were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories. Even though, as a child, I had read various classics like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and even Victor Hugo’s epic Notre Dame de Paris, it took the pandemic for me to really delve into Poe’s work. I knew of The Tell-Tale Heart, but when I read it again in early 2020, I realised how perfect a speech it would be for an online performance - and how apt for the times of quarantine! The whole story takes place in virtually one room, and is about a creeping, murderous entity, indiscriminately deciding to kill an old man. And this was still at the time when it seemed that the virus was only targeting senior citizens. I decided to create the online show via Facebook Live, and this was the first of many shows we created during the pandemic for our online audiences. A few months later, we created an online show of Poe’s The Black Cat, which was streamed live from The Space in Canary Wharf - again, still while we were all in lockdown. Then, when theatres started to open up again at the tail end of 2021, I added two more stories to my Poe repertoire: The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven, and put all four together in a solo show called One Man Poe. I use the original texts from the 1840s, and so I like to describe One Man Poe as being like a live audio book.
One Man Poe has really snowballed over the last few years, and I have now toured the UK with it, visiting many schools, and presented it in Dubai and Malaysia. I am booked on an annual basis in the USA, where I perform at the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival (talk about target audience!) and at the Poe Museum. I’m returning with the show for a third consecutive year, after presenting it for the full run at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe.
I’m incredibly proud of the show, and the whole experience of developing it and its subsequent success has taught me to honour and embrace my inner child. I spent so much time after drama school trying to think about what the industry wants, rather than about unique work that only I can contribute.
In my view you created a new genre of theatre at that time, which you now expound in classes at drama schools.
By and large, I found many of the pandemic’s Zoom shows that I watched quite boring and unimaginative, although I commended the creatives involved for giving it a go and staying busy. I watched many of the National Theatre Lives, but inevitably felt that I would be having a better time in the theatre, and felt very much like 'Audience B'. But I knew there was a better way, a more interesting and challenging medium, as in 2017 I was inspired by a Woody Harrelson film called Lost in London. It was a film shot in various locations around London, in one, singular, un-edited take - but not only that, it was streamed 100% live to select cinemas as it was happening. Woody came to LIPA, and showed it to us in a screening plus a Q&A. It was an awesome moment, meeting and chatting with him, but the film itself must have made an impression on me.
While in lockdown, Stephanie, my brother David, and I, created a few shows from home in this same unique style. However, we obviously had a shoe-string budget and only used mobile phones and free-to-use livestreaming technology. The shows developed as we went along, and we ended up winning several OFFIE awards for our online work.
And now, I am in talks with many institutions about running workshops on Digital Theatre, and even ran a five-week-long Digital Theatre module at LIPA last year. It was a pleasure returning as one of the experts and teaching the undergrads - a full circle moment! But more than that, I truly believe that my particular style of Digital Theatre is the most inclusive, the most accessible way of creating live performance. I don’t agree with the idea that you need expensive, elitist equipment to create engaging shows. It seems that drama schools provide students with wonderful experiences whilst in training, using thousands of pounds’ worth of filming and editing software, and then when they graduate, they can’t create the same content as they could, unless they are able to afford the same kit.
What I offer is a zero-excuse mentality of staying creative and reaching world-wide audiences, created in any location you want, using your phone. And what’s more accessible than a show made specifically for people to experience from the comfort of their own home? As soon as the pandemic ended - during which we all felt somewhat dis-abled - many people seemed to immediately forget about those who still can’t leave their homes, or maybe even their beds. So yes, I am now teaching students how to create these shows themselves, and am learning a lot myself in the act of teaching.
En route to where we are now you also threw in a performance as Romeo in Shakespeare’s classic and then last year we discovered that you are also able to do musical theatre and you collected a Broadway Baby Bobby Award for you solo performance in Apple of My Eye.
I have played Romeo, yes, and I also have played Tybalt, in two different productions of R&J. I adore Shakespeare and classical text. That's partly why I promote Poe’s rich poetry and prose in One Man Poe. And I do love musical theatre - both seeing it and performing it. Despite being very interested in acting when I was a small child, I had always convinced myself that I was too shy to pursue it seriously. But combination of appearing in the school edition of Les Miserables and playing Dad in Steven Berkoff’s East - both at Rickmansworth School - that made me think, “I can do this!”. My third year show at LIPA was Urinetown, where I played Bobby Strong - another affirming experience as a musical theatre actor, where I had a few powerful 'Freddie Mercury notes!” I am not a triple-threat though, and although I can do some basic choreography, the Les Mis One Day More marching routine is for sure my comfort zone.
For Edinburgh 2024, you're launching the Stephen Smith: One-Man-Rep EdFringe Season, that includes the Poe quartet as well as a new play for this year.
It will be somewhat of a rep season, as I am performing essentially five different plays! Four are the stories within One Man Poe and then the fifth is a brand-new solo show written by Joan Greening called A Montage of Mone’, about the 19th Century painter, who is often hailed as the ‘Founder of Impressionism’. This new play tells the story of both his life and the development of the Impressionist movement. As with Apple of My Eye, I am including a large number of projections within the show, to aid the storytelling. I realised that, when reading the script, the audience might not have any reference to any of the work mentioned in the play, and so I’ll be synchronising images appearing behind Monet (me) when he’s telling his story.
That's a lot of words to remember. Didn't you once calculate that in the Poe quartet?
One Man Poe contains 13000 words and is a few thousands words more than the full, uncut part of Hamlet. A Montage of Monet is about 6000 words. Also jumbling around in my head currently is the Apple of My Eye script, which is 4300 words, including 13 songs. And in recent months, I have also developed a new solo show version of The Wind in the Willows, where I perform the entire first chapter of the book unabridged as another 'live audio book', and that piece is 4350 words. I am presenting all four shows currently at the Watford Fringe Festival throughout July, so really the Edinburgh Fringe ‘rep season’ is only half of what I can present.
Are you workaholic or just highly organised and committed to making very efficient use of your time?
I think it is a mixture of all three. I do have a meticulous and obstinate work ethic. I have to so work hard, as I have been living in London for the last few years, and it’s been nearly two and a half years since I’ve needed a waitering or bar job to supplement my income as an actor and artist. I made the decision a few years ago to go ‘all-in’ on my dream, and although I spent nearly ten years juggling two or three zero-hour-contract, minimum wage jobs, I have decided to move on from that. I realised that my time and energy was far more valuable than anything a bar job could pay me. Evaluating my worth, I saw that working a minimum wage job was, in effect, losing money. As soon as I made that attitude switch, I’ve not looked back.
If times get too hard, I am more than happy to return to hospitality gigs to pay the bills, and I don’t turn my nose up at it, but for now, I don’t need to. It should be noted that this change in my attitude has happened alongside a drastic lifestyle change for the better. I am now four and a half years sober, I read regularly (books on financial literacy, habit change, productivity and mental health). I don’t smoke anymore, and I don’t seem to have much of this FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) phenomenon that social media perpetuates. A mantra of mine is that “there is no competition as there is only one you”.
The driving force of everything that I do is simply that I love it so much, which is why I do so much of it, and that passion alone keeps me going. I am somewhat of an anomaly, as I don’t know many actors who are Artistic Directors of their own theatre company, and have the combined skills to see to all the admin, create all the marketing, manage the social media, manage the creative teams, design the set, design the lighting, somewhat design the sound (I have a collaborative relationship with a composer, Joseph Furey), and also perform the plays, and even direct myself by on large. I have the autonomy of doing exactly what I’d like to do and when I like to do it. The next step up would be to earn more so that I can delegate more. What I really need is a manager - someone who can fill my diary and book in all my various solo shows up and down the country, and take a commission of the income. I think of myself as much more of a gigging musician, rather than a jobbing actor, metaphorically speaking - only that I travel around with a suitcase and perform stories, instead of songs .
