Jackson Smith pursues passion in directing

In form and style, To Be Young, Gifted and Black , which is playing this weekend in Hall Auditorium, is a perfect piece for director Caroline Jackson Smith. In the past few years, the Associate Professor of Theater and African American Studies has developed her directing skills by working on what she calls "freewheeling, poetic, sort of storytelling-based plays."

Jackson Smith has always been interested in theater. Growing up in the New York area, she remembers her mother taking her into the city to see plays. Yet, later in life, when she began to think about what she would actually do with her life, Jackson Smith did not instantly decide theater was her passion.

"Politics was our theater," she said, "so I didn't think of it as a profession. I was interested in social justice and cultural reform."

After receiving her BA at Yale in 1974, where she majored in African American Studies, Jackson Smith became a teacher in the New Haven public school system, teaching various subjects in high schools and middle schools for seven years. It was as an English teacher that Jackson Smith first became involved in working on theater productions with students.

After going to Yale to study for a Masters Degree in African American Studies, she worked as Director of the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, where she was involved in live theater, usually as a producer.

It was during this time that Jackson Smith realized that she wanted to become more involved creatively in these pieces. She began to consider directing as a profession, and left New Haven with the idea that she "didn't want to be an administrator. [She] wanted to see what space there might be for [her] to explore being an artist."

Jackson Smith was planning on moving to New York when her friend, intellectual and author bell hooks, a former African American Studies Department professor at Oberlin, heard about a job opening in the Theater program, and immediately put Jackson Smith's name forward as a possible candidate. Suddenly, Jackson Smith was called and told she was a finalist.

"It all sort of had the hand of the divine in it," she said, "when I came for the interview, and realized that someone would give me a job where I could continue developing my directing skills. And given all of the resources we have here in terms of design faculty, I felt very happy."

Jackson Smith began teaching at Oberlin in the fall of 1989. It was during those first few semesters at Oberlin that Jackson Smith began developing her directing style and discover what sort of plays she liked to direct. During her second year here, she directed two one-act plays by Adrienne Kennedy, a playwright who was to greatly shape Jackson Smith's ideals about directing.

"I didn't understand these plays when I first read them, so I decided to direct them," she said. "I think of directing as a way to find out something I don't already know."

Jackson Smith discovered she had a preference for Kennedy's style. "It was so electrifying going into this abstract, more surrealistic work," she said, "where everything is in the language, where you're stripped away of realistic conventions. I just got hooked on working in less realistic styles.

"Some people come at non-realistic plays and they feel like you have to throw out all of the naturalistic techniques," she said. "They try to go for absurdist effects, or highly stylized forms of acting, but I don't think it has to be all or nothing, and if you can get those really human connect moments into a swirling, abstract piece, then that's the best of all worlds."

Also fundamental in Jackson Smith's approach is her concept of collaboration between actors, designers, musicians, and director in a production. It was two years ago, when Jackson Smith was asked to adapt a group of poems about slavery called "The Women of Plums" for Karamu House in Cleveland, that she realized her approach to directing a play had changed. She had started using more and more of an improvisational rehearsal process, asking the actors to work together to invent the staging. "I am happiest when I can get a group of actor-designer-collaborators and we can let a lot of things happen in the process of rehearsal," she said.

Of the two professional productions Jackson Smith directed last year, one must be singled out as a monumental step for her as a director. As part of the Signature Theatre Company's festival celebrating the work of Adrienne Kennedy at the New York Public Theater last fall, Jackson Smith directed Funnyhouse of a Negro as part of an evening of two one-act plays.

"We had some regular rough spots, but the strength the cast brought and the freedom they felt to create was such a great affirmation," Jackson Smith said. She sought and achieved a communal, collaborative atmosphere rarely seen in a company of actors today. Yet she was also aware of the dangers such work can bring.

"It's such pain-based work that you have to protect the actors psychologically, you have to access the deepest thing in them and protect them psychologically. You have to give them a lot of insulation and trust among each other."

Also involved in this production was senior composition major Cathy Elliott, who has also collaborated with Jackson Smith musically on three Oberlin productions, including To Be Young, Gifted and Black. Elliott's haunting original music, written for a single cellist, became in effect an extra character in the play. Jackson Smith relishes these musical relationships as part of her process. "I am happiest when there are musicians around during the entire process and they are just another character developing," she said.

Yet Jackson Smith says she still enjoys teaching here at Oberlin. Most recently, she directed Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus last yearl. She finds certain things rewarding about working in a college atmosphere.

"You can train people, get to know people over time, people may be willing to go along with you if you have foreign ideas," she said. "Because I come out of literature and not out of acting, I have always been interesed in language and poetry."

All in all, Caroline Jackson Smith has said she's led a fulfilling life, yet she is also content to just let things happen. She subscribes to a healthy philosophy - "Follow your heart where it leads."