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 Bessie Award winning theater director and performance artist. He is the Executive Artistic Director of NYC’s Obie Award winning theater, The Flea and a board member of A.R.T./New York.

He has helmed the productions of theatrical concerts by John Batiste, Taylor Mac, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lady Rizo and En Vogue; music theater works including The Hang and The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist; and he has directed the world premieres of new plays and musicals at The Alley, Goodman Theatre, The Flea, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood, New York Fringe, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Summer Play Festival and Under the Radar. His participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, The Flea, The Invisible Dog, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS.

Smith is co-director of the critically acclaimed ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’, winner of the Kennedy Prize in Drama, Bessie Award, the Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He was also the associate director of the Tony Award winning musical FELA! – restaging that production in London, Lagos and its world tour.  He has worked on the artistic staffs of The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company and Providence Black Rep.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Smith is the recipient of the Black Theater Alliance Award for Best Direction, a Bessie Award, Van Lier Fellowship, Warner Bentley Award, Tucker Fellowship, Arkowitz Prize and the Shoenhut Service Award.