Emmet Smith '21
What have you been up to since graduation?
Following the classic Northwestern theatre major pipeline, I moved to Andersonville after graduation with a couple of Wildcats to hack the Chicago theater scene. I ended up doing everything from background acting to writing 24-hour musicals for kids’ summer camps to managing the very Wirtz Center Box Office that I did work-study at for four years at Northwestern. These were not gigs I set out to do from the jump, but in hindsight, it was valuable time in rooms that taught me about the industry I’ve come to work in.
I got an audition for the Marriott Theatre’s The Sound of Music through Professor Ryan T. Nelson and booked my first real adult theater gig in the very Chicago theater community I had coveted. The family-like “once you’re in, you’re in” nature of that community was both alluring and terrifying to a noncommittal 22-year-old, and New York television work and theater callbacks were pulling me away fairly often. After a year in Chicago, I moved to New York—and that very month I got my first audition for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Fast forward many rounds of callbacks, not booking the job, working on other eclectic projects (most of which came through some purple mafia magic), and eventually booking Cursed Child’s first tour, and I am back in Chicago for six months in the community I love. While it was hard to leave, the winding road has taught me there’s not much point in making plans—at least at this stage—and life is long enough that the things you love might still be there to return to. I’ve enjoyed letting the wind blow me around a little and keeping AND in my DNA—cheesy, but true.
Two current plugs:
Mr. Santa hits AMC Theaters December 6! It is my first lead in a feature film, and I got to write a couple of songs for it too. Some light holiday fun!
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is in Chicago through February 2 and then will be in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, later this year. Let me know if you’re coming! @emmetsmithnyc
Who made an impact on your life at Northwestern?
I went to campus this week to talk to my acting teacher David Catlin’s current class, and reflecting on that time was a needed reminder of why I love what I love about theater. The work I do now in the inventive, imagination-required adventure that is Cursed Child all comes back to his class, where we learned theater-making more than just acting. And more than anything, David facilitated relationships between us as a cohort. He encouraged us to challenge and grow each other, which I saw in his class this week. Those classmates become people you work with, live with, and have lifelong relationships with, and they are born of a space where a teacher like David knows enough to let us teach each other.
I have to also give love to Alex Weisman ’10 from the original cast of Cursed Child. Alex came in to talk to a class during my sophomore year (and eventually coached my auditions), and that experience totally opened my eyes. So it was cool to pass on some part of that in visiting campus this week.
What does success look like to you?
I’m figuring that out and trying to decouple it a bit from what I’ve been told success looks like. By many measures, I’ve had a “successful” postgrad so far, but success for me hasn’t always followed success on paper. I was probably happiest when I was living in Andersonville right out of school—making less money and performing for less people—but filling my well with relationships and making stuff for me (a cliché, I know). But I wonder if there’s a way to do it all. I think the dream of checking all one’s boxes—engaging in work that I enjoy, living in a place with people I love, making enough money to live, having an impact in my world—rubs against some of the realities of being in one’s 20s. I’m trying to be okay with that for now and learning that all those boxes don’t always have to come from the same one project at one time, and that a career (and life for that matter) is a patchwork. In the meantime, success looks like making sure I’m taking care of myself first—meditating and all that good stuff—and making sure my brain is there with me, present and ready to enjoy the trip.