Roger Guenveur Smith’s Frederick Douglass NOW is a monologue inspired by the life and work of the self-liberated abolitionist and pioneering feminist Frederick Douglass. Smith has edited Douglass' classic 19th Century texts into a jazz-infused narrative, bookended by original writing of Beckettian force to produce the kind of edgy stylistic mash-up of which vital contemporary theater is made. Originally commissioned at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York, Smith’s Douglass has been continually refined in the tradition of Hal Holbrook's ever-evolving Mark Twain Tonight. Smith has performed Frederick Douglass NOW at prestigious venues on both sides of the Atlantic, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Roger Guenveur Smith is an award-winning writer, actor, and director. His solo pieces for international stage include A. Huey P. Newton Story and Frederick Douglass NOW. Some of his other notable pieces for the stage are: Christopher Columbus 1992, In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Who Killed Bob Marley?, and Inside The Creole Mafia (with Mark Broyard). His film roles include the stuttering hero Smiley in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in addition to an eclectic range of characters in Hamlet, Malcolm X, Get On the Bus, Eve’s Bayou, He Got Game, and American Gangster, which earned him a nomination for a Screen Actor’s Guild Award. His featured performances for HBO include roles in K Street, Oz, and Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. He is a graduate of Occidental College and the Yale School of Drama.
