As the head of the Professional Playwriting Program, Ohio University professor Charles R. Smith has accumulated many awards during his successful career. With his latest work, he has caught the attention of critics throughout the nation.
Smith’s The Gospel According to James and Other Plays combines five of his award-winning plays, including Jelly Belly, Free Man of Color, Pudd’nhead Wilson, Knock Me a Kiss and The Gospel According to James.
Critic Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times said of Knock me a Kiss: “In one blistering scene after another — with dialogue that is alternately highly poetic, down-and-dirty, eerily disturbing and fiercely authoritarian — Smith exposes the lies and the blazing truths that animate his characters.”
The namesake of the compilation is a story of African-American teenagers in a small Indiana town during the 1930s.
While attempting to escape the town, where racism is heavily present, two of the teenagers become lynching victims. The other two escape the violence and later meet to remember their turbulent childhoods.
“A lot of my work is about people discovering their identities,” Smith said.
It is the Chicago native’s hope that those who come across his work are able to look past the color of his skin and not to look at his work as a “black play.”
Jeff Kallet, Smith’s publicist at the Ohio University Press, is on a mission to market Smith’s work not only to people with an interest in African-American history, but rather “to anybody who enjoys theater.”
Kallet has reached out to critics and producers from Houston to Cleveland to have Smith’s plays produced in theaters throughout the country.
The Gospel According to James and Other Plays is available at Little Professor Book Center and might become required reading for several OU courses.
bf051111@ohiou.edu
