Datebook: Cleavon Smith knew when he was graduating from high school in Baldwyn, Miss., that he didn’t want to be “indentured.”
Now an Oakland playwright, he was then getting recruited to play college football as a fullback. “I had an older sister who went to private school, and I saw how my parents’ paying her tuition was lorded over her,” he recalled, in a brushy voice with just a trace of a Southern accent.
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One concept I have been noticing more and more about this industry is that many people find themselves in the entertainment world without going to school for it or after pursuing other interests of theirs. Smith is an example of this since Smith “didn’t always see himself as a playwright”. I have immense respect for playwrights because they fabricate characters and stories that stem from their life experiences and create a purpose that others can experience. This article mentions that one of smith’s goals is “to figure out ways to communicate how we miss-see”. This concept is something I had to take a moment to really thing about because I find this to be incredibly important and necessary in our world today and as a person in the theatre industry, I want my work to always support and be involved in this cause. Something I have learned along the way while discovering why I feel this attraction towards theatre is that I love storytelling and even though I am not seen or heard by the audience, I contribute to the art that is formed in whatever the four walls of a theatre look like.
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