About SEWS
Stuart E.W. Smith has many hats from his careers in theatre and education. He’s developed and run several theatre programs in his life, from his “garage band theatre” group, the Rusty Yak Company with high school stage buddies, to the Motherlode Stage Company, a not-for-profit troupe based in Placer County for a dozen years that developed original work by local artists about local stories, including many plays by Smith himself. He also served the longest tenure for any drama teacher in Roseville High School’s century-long history, where his 16 seasons with the program (called Burning Bright Theatre while he ran it) pulled in the lion’s share of awards for student original playwriting and directing.
His writing goes far beyond the stage, including a large body of poetry, as well as a New Adult novel, Tay and the DinoSorcerers, and a large miscellany of prose works.
The Father of Invention
Multitalented creative pursues his passions in Placer County
By Jessica Laskey
For Stuart E. W. Smith, necessity is often the mother of invention. During his 30-plus year career as a performer, educator and writer, Smith has relied on his boundless creativity and deeply philosophical mind to accomplish projects of all kinds—and he’s just getting started.
Smith grew up in a creative household (his mother was a music teacher and his father taught English at Sierra College for 30 years), so it’s no surprise that he became “prince of the geeks” at Placer High School—performing in plays and as the school’s drum major, writing for the school paper and earning the title of valedictorian.
He went on to create his own major at UC Berkeley called Ethnotheatre—or “comp lit for drama”—in which he studied the language, folklore and theatrical traditions of Japan and Southeast Asia. (He also became one of the youngest apprentices at California Shakespeare Theater). He continued his studies during a teaching fellowship at the University of Hawaii, where he earned his MFA, and on tour in China performing Beijing opera.
“It took me traveling all the way to China to get back to Shakespeare,” Smith says. “I realized that what I really love is theater from a time before we started chopping up performers into actors, singers, dancers—theater styles where you were expected to be able to do it all.”
This revelation served him well when he returned to his native Newcastle in Placer County. (He now lives on family land with his wife, also a performer and teacher, and three children.) In 1994, Smith founded Motherlode Stage Company, a troupe designed to celebrate California history and educate young performers—many of them students from Roseville High School, where he’s taught theater and English for 21 years. (He closed up the company in 2010 to focus on teaching.)
“Necessity has driven a lot of my writing, based on subject and cast size,” says Smith, who’s written several original plays as well as theater-related texts like The Bat in the Land with No Birds (about creating an artistic community) and The Quiet Way (a game-based theater training system). “Writing has also meant getting work onstage that I want to see.”
When a former student passed away suddenly in 2019, something “broke loose” in Smith and inspired him to dedicate significant time to yet another creative passion: poetry. In Loco Parentis is Smith’s new collection of 60 poems that reflect on his experiences as a teacher through three different character voices. He also recently finished his first New Adult adventure novel, Tay and the DinoSorcerers, about a passionate young person who is called upon to assemble a team and think creatively to save the world.
Sounds like a job for Stuart E. W. Smith.
Jessica Laskey’s work has appeared in Comstock’s, Sacramento and Sactown Magazines, as well as in the Sacramento Bee, Inside Sacramento and OUT North Texas. More info at jessicalaskey.com.
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