ARTIST STATEMENT

I create performances that engage, provoke, and expand the limits of self-expression. I hold myself to a rigorous aesthetic process that equally values emotional intuition, intellectual discourse, and the intersection of national and cultural identities, and I strive to incite dialogue by acknowledging and implicating the audience.

BIO

Niegel Smith is a performance artist and theater director who sculpts social spaces into unique communal environments where we make new rituals, excavate our pasts and imagine future narratives. His walks have been produced by Elastic City, the Prelude Festival and PS 122 and his theater by The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Summer Play Festival, New York Fringe Festival and the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble.

Niegel is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the associate director of the Tony Award winning musical FELA! and has received grants and fellowships from Theater Communications Group, the Van Lier Fund and the Tucker Foundation. Before surviving high school in Detroit, he grew up in the North Carolina piedmont, fishing with his dad, shopping with his mom and inventing tall-tale fantasies with his two younger brothers.