Charise Castro Smith


Charise Castro Smith is an American playwright and actress. She is best known for her plays such as Feathers and Teeth and The Hunchback of Seville. She has also written for television shows such as Devious Maids and The Exorcist, as well as appearing in shows such as The Good Wife and Unforgettable. She is a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship at the New Dramatists in New York, as well as a member of New Georges' the JAM and an alumna of the Ars Nova's Playgroup. She is currently working on commissions from Trinity Repertory Company, Soho Rep and the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Personal life

Smith was born around 1984, and is from Miami, Florida, where she was raised in a Cuban-American family. She attended Brown University as an undergraduate student and later attended the Yale School of Drama for acting. Before her time in theater began, she was a city schoolteacher. Though she initially trained as an actor, she is currently more focused on being writer and prefers the lively atmosphere of theater. She currently lives in LA and is married to fellow actor Joby Earle, whom she met at Yale.

Education

After receiving her BA from Brown, Smith attended the Yale School of Drama to attain a Master's in Fine Arts. She had intended to get an MFA as an actor, but in 2008, she produced her play Estrella Cruz at the Yale Cabaret during her time as a student, and Paula Vogel, head of the playwrighting program at the time, began to act as a mentor to Smith. After graduating, she was doing mostly acting work in small, short-term television jobs. At the same time, she was playwriting as a side project until she was selected for the Van Lier Fellowship Program in 2012-2013 at the New Dramatists in New York. This led her to embrace playwriting as a career, and quickly following her fellowship she began TV writing.

Career

Artistic inspiration

Many of Smith's plays have a theme of comedy, which she cites as "just kind of how I roll." In addition, her plays are relationship-focused and often politically relevant, such as The Hunchback of Seville. Smith believes that the artist should not "dictate what an audience member takes away from a play," respecting the audience experience as what it is. When writing her plays, she is interested in the actor's experience inside the play itself, and wants to create more complex and "crazy" roles for women on stage as the main character. When Smith was acting regularly, she felt she was always cast as girlfriends or sidekick, while the men were the ones who had the type of roles she wanted; as a result, she wanted to create roles for other female actors to have the opportunity to play these dimensional roles. In addition to the comedic tone, this is a sentiment seen in several of her plays.
When discussing her writing process, Smith refers to a technique, inspired by Paula Vogel, called the "Bake-Off" method. In other cases, Smith also cites her writing process involves "putting giant papers on the wall to map it all out." Her plays have been inspired by an eclectic mix of works, such as Shakespeare, South Park, Greek myths, and 1970s horror films.

Playwright career

In 2008, Smith submitted her first play Estrella Cruz to be produced by Yale Cabaret, but the play had not been produced elsewhere until 2011 at the Ars Nova ANT Fest in New York City and later in 2016 at the Halcyon Theater in Chicago. The play is a Cuban-American twist of a Greek myth of the goddess Persephone set in the 21st century, focusing on a mother-daughter relationship. It is the first play that Smith had written and produced to an official audience, and in its first production she herself played the titular role Estrella Cruz.
In 2011, Smith's play Boomcracklefly was produced at the Milgaro Theater in Portland, Oregon. The play follows three different intertwining narratives: engineer in Havana, acrobat sisters in Key West, and a transgender prostitute in New York, and "daringly juggles diverse poetic images and eccentric characters," as claimed by the Oregonian's review.
In 2014, The Hunchback of Seville was produced by the Washington Ensemble Theatre. Acclaimed as a "gleefully revisionist riff on rampaging colonialism," The Hunchback of Seville was inspired by Smith's interest in how Americans handle the history of Columbus and the massacres that resulted from his actions. The complex character of Queen Isabella stems from Smith's own desire to play Richard III, wanting to build that role for a woman in her own play. The play was also produced by the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep.
Smith's most produced work Feathers and Teeth was featured at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in New Stage Festivals. Inspired by Hamlet, 1970s horror films, and Jon Ronson's book , Feathers and Teeth centers on a 13-year-old girl who lost her mom and thinks her new step-mother is a demon. As with Smith's other plays, Feathers and Teeth follows suit by featuring a complex, "crazy" female lead in an eccentric and comedic play. Ultimately, Smith's goal was to use horror as a way to help others understand the human experience of obsession and fear. Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, staged Feathers and Teeth from March 7 to April 2, 2017.
In addition to Smith's individual original playwrighting work, she has collaborated with other playwrights and artists, co-writing play such as That High Lonesome Sound or contributing to larger projects such as Washeteria. Smith's most recent work El Huracán, featured in the DNA New Work Series at La Jolla Playhouse, is described as loosely connected to the ideas of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Smith is currently working on a science fiction play.

Films

Castro Smith will make her film debut in a Walt Disney Animation Studios film, tentatively titled Encanto, centered on a Colombian girl who lacks magical powers in spite of her family having them. Castro Smith will co-direct the film alongside Zootopia co-directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush, and will co-write the screenplay alongside Bush.

Artist credits

Playwriting credits