Teaching interests Site-based theatre, ambulatory performance, performance and environments, community theatre, improvisation, directing, playwriting, live art, symbolist theatre, rough theatre.
Research interests Ambulatory performance, walking as performance, performance and the city, situationist practice, rough theatre, street performance, processions, site-specific performance and site-based theatre.
UoP Research group membership
Theatre, Dance and Performing Arts
Creative practice & artistic projects
There is an account of the autobiographical aspects of Phil's work related to walking in Deirdre Heddon's 'Autobiography and Performance' (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) pages 105-111.
Site-based or site-related performance work since 2003 (most recent first):
Aldwych Walk - for the Site, Performance and Environmental Change AHRC Network.
A Yarn Around The West End for Drive In Deco/Hidden City, Plymouth
A Tour of Sardine Street (with Simon Persighetti) - culmination of the Relics and Processions project (handbook in production)
Geo-Quest project (with Tony Lidington & Hugh Nankivell)
Water Walk (with Simon Persighetti)
Morte Point Mis-Guide (for the National Trust)
Light Walk - a short film made with Polly Macpherson, shown at Spacex Gallery
Gardens Always Mean Something Else (at A la Ronde, National Trust) with Francesca Falchi-Pereira and Rakeen Silawi
Beer, Beef and Royal Steps mis-guide-performance/"twalk" for Royal William Victualling Yard, Stonehouse
dramaturg for 'Catherine', Hidden City Festival, Plymouth
The Fabulous Walks (Teignbridge, Devon, UK) with Anoushka Athique, Katie Etheridge, Simon Persighetti, Fumiaki Tanaka, Nicola Singh, Rachel Sweeney and Chartwell Dutiro.
Wrights & Sites curating "Misguided' for the Belluard Bollwerk International, Fribourg, Switzerland
In Search of Pontiflunk (play) performed by New Perspectives Theatre Company
Manchester, Mythogeography and Mobile Machinoeki - performance at TRIP conference, Manchester
A Man About The House - performance with Simon Persighetti, at A la Ronde, National Trust commission
Mobile Machinoeki project (including 3 performance walks & Rescued From The History Hut performance, with Anoushka Athique & Katie Etheridge)
Foray – performance/walk at A La Ronde for The National Trust
Mis-Guided Walk + Mapping Workshop, Northlands Park, Basildon (with Wrights & Sites)
Taunton A-Dead Mis-guided Walk for Taunton Brewhouse Anti-Static Festival
Exeter Everyday Festival, Wrights & Sites
Crab Steps Aside (written and performed, with directorial assitance from Sue Palmer)
For Space - performance for Making Space/Taking Space Conference (Devon Arts Forum/CCEP)
It’s Crab Walking! – talk and walk presentations for Teignbridge DC Walk This Way groups
Masses – a mis-guided walk, ICA London
The Present Generation, led 2-day workshop section for Organic Theatre (for Wrights & Sites), Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (PAN)
Drift (film, directed by Clive Austin)
Coastal Edge - performance for Tide & Time (Phoenix Arts Centre)
4 Screens (2), (installation), psi, St Mary’s College, London Wrights & Sites
A Beaminster Mis-Guided Walk for Beaminster Festival
Simultaneous Drift (lecture/performance for Situations), Arnolfini, Wrights & Sites
Desire Lines walk – Art and Ecology symposium, Dartington
4 Screens (1), Walk 21 Conference, Melbourne (installation)
Mis-guided Soho - Walk for Living Streets (Wrights & Sites)
Crab Steps Aside (writer/performer)
Performance On The Path (walk/performance) Tide & Time/South West Coast Path Team
Time and Light - performance with St James High School/Exeter Phoenix (writer/director/performer)
Observatory Walk (walk/performance to the Norman Lockyer Observatory for Alias Encounters)
A Michael Chekhov Mis-Guide: walk/performance at Michael Chekhov Conference, Dartington (with Simon Persighetti, Wrights & Sites)
Subverting the City: A Mis-Guide to Milton Keynes, Wrights & Sites, for Optimistic Productions & Fulcrum TV for Channel 4.
The Gap – performance/walk (with mathematician Matthew Watkins), British Association Festival of Science
The Crab Walks! – written and performed, (directorial assitamce by Anjali Jay).
Hat and Book – a Blue Boy Walk for Spacex Gallery (part of the Homeland/Middle England exhibition)
Theatre work with TNT (Munich) since 2003
Don Quixote (co-adaptor), Much Ado About Nothing (dramaturg), One Language, Many Voices (co-adaptor), Oliver Twist (co-adaptor), Fahrenheit 451 (co-adaptor), Taming of the Shrew (dramaturg), King Lear TNT (dramaturg), The Crucible (dramaturg), Frankenstein (co-adaptor), Romeo and Juliet (dramaturg), The Death Of A Salesman (dramaturg), Moon Palace (co-adaptor), Hamlet (dramaturg), Harold & Maude (dramaturg)
Other theatre since 2003:
Sprout, Proteus Theatre Company (writer)
Bleak House, Oxfordshire Touring Theatre Company (adaptor)
David – (Auto)biographical theatre piece scripted for David Oddie, Barefoot Project
Publications
‘Gardens
always mean something else’: turning knotty performance and paranoid research
on their head at A la Ronde(Cultural
Geographies 2011;18, no 4: pp 537-546)
Mythogeography works: performing multiplicity on Queen Street (Research in Drama Education, Vol 16, Issue 2, 2011.
A Sardine Street Box of Tricks: How To Make Your Own Mis-Guided Tour On Main Street (with Simon Persighetti) (republished Triarchy Press, 2012) - available from http://www.triarchypress.com/pages/Sardine-Street-Box-of-Tricks.htm
Tourists and Terrorists - Useful Ambiguities in a Search for Models (Rhizomes 21, Winter 2010) online at http://www.rhizomes.net/issue21/smith/index.html
'A la Ronde: eccentricity, interpretation and the end of the world' in Performing Heritage, eds. Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd (Manchester University Press, 2011)
Mythogeography (Triarchy Press, Axminster, UK, 2010). A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: 'dealing
with the city' co-authored with Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti & Cathy
Turner, in 'Performance and the ContemporaryCity: An Interdisciplinary Reader' ed.
Nicolas Whybrow (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The contemporary dérive: a partial review of issues concerning the contemporary practice of psychogeography Cultural Geographies Volume 17 Issue 1, January 2010
The Mis-Guide Tour and the Standard Tour - a study of contrasting tour-guiding practices in the city of Exeter (UK) Gothenburg Research Institute proceedings of 1st International Research Forum on Guided Tours, Halmstad, 2009
“Burning the Box Office: locating the relics of
theatricality in a dramaturgy of the everyday” Performance Research Vol 14 (3).
A Mis-Guided Tour - a film by Siobhan McKeown, performed by Phil Smith, of a 'guided tour' using a mythogeographical approach: available free of charge for teaching and research purposes from philip.smith@plymouth.ac.uk
Walking, Writing and Performance: Autobiographical Texts by Deirdre Heddon, Carl Lavery and Phil Smith edited by Roberta Mock, Bristol: Intellect, 2009.
"Inside The Darkness Outside" in walkwalkwalk: stories from the Exeter archive, published by Site Projects, London, 2009.
"Actors As Signposts: A Model for Site-based and Ambulatory Performance", New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 25, 2009.
"Theatrical-political Possibilities In Contemporary Procession", Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 29 (1), 2009.
The Mythogeographical Manifesto (with etcetera) - published for the Hidden City Symposium, 2008
"From Theatre To Dispersal: a Journey from Stalowa Wola to Mobile Machinoeki", Performance Research 12 (2), 2007
"There" - essay in Focus On Farmer, Aune Head Arts, Princetown UK, 2007.
"The Mythogeography of Things To Become" serialized, Cabinet, 3, 4 & 5, etcetera, Exeter, 2007/8.
Possible Forests (dvd-rom (2006)and exhibition (2007)) CCANW/Wrights & Sites
"A Taxonomy On Its Toes", Performance Research 11 (1), 2006.
"A Manifesto For A New Walking Culture" (with Wrights & Sites) - Performance Research 11 (2), 2006.
A Mis-Guide To Anywhere Wrights & Sites, Exeter, 2006.
"Street Performance and Public Ritual in Exeter, 1830s to 1930s", Studies In Theatre and Performance Vol 24 (2), 2003.
"A Short History Of The Future Of Walking" Rhizomes, 7, Fall, 2004. www.rhizomes.net
An Exeter Mis-Guide Wrights & Sites , Exeter, 2003.
"Dread, Route and Time: An Autobiographical Walking of Everything Else", Reconstruction, 3 (1), Winter 2003. http://www.reconstruction.ws
“O Are You Not Being Phil”, Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 22 (1), 2001.
"This Is My World" in Site-specific: The Quay Thing Documented, Supplement 5, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2000.
