By Dave Timberline

Photo by Ash Daniel

October 8, 2008

Jase Smith, 32

Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator

Director on Staff

Firehouse Theatre Project

There are artists who other artists line up to work with; they draw together cohorts of followers fervent in their praise and loyalty. In his two-year tenure as a director in Richmond, the outgoing and energetic Jase Smith has become one of those artists.

Smith exploded onto the local scene with this summer’s “Reefer Madness,” a campy romp complete with cannibalism and orgies. The musical gained universal praise and was given an extended run at the Firehouse Theatre.

“People think there isn’t a market for people to see offbeat shows,” Smith says. “I think there are lots of underserved theatergoers who haven’t been getting a chance to see what they want to see.”

When not directing, the young auteur has lent his marketing prowess to projects initiated by the Conciliation Project, a group led by a Virginia Commonwealth University theater professor that produces theatrical works on issues of social justice, race relations and discrimination, and then uses those projects to assist nonprofits such as a local women’s shelter and the Daily Planet.

Sensing the benefit in keeping a guy like Smith around, the Firehouse offered him a job and a guarantee of two shows to direct a season to forestall the director’s planned emigration to New York. Want proof he’s committed to pushing the local envelope? His next show: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.”