Associate Professor • Head of the Actor Training Program
Robert Scott Smith, Assistant Professor, Associate Chair, and Head of the Actor Training Program at the University of Utah, is a professional actor who received his MFA from the prestigious Old Globe Theatre Actor Training Program at the University of San Diego and his BFA from the Actor Training Program at the University of Utah.
As a professional actor, his NYC credits include Kreutzer Sonata (United Solo Festival), Keeping Ishmael (Workshop), and Pericles (SLANT). SLC acting credits include Gold Mountain (Utah Shakespeare); Mary Stuart, The Crucible, and Two Henrys (Pioneer Theatre Company); Sleeping Giant (World Premiere), Yoga Play, Saturday’s Voyeur, Climbing with Tigers, Rapture Blister Burn, Good People, Charm (World Premiere), Swimming in the Shallows, Six Years, Big Love, Batboy: The Musical, and Gross Indecency (Salt Lake Acting Company); A Streetcar Named Desire, Our Town (The Grand Theatre); and Ice Front (World Premiere), Kreutzer Sonata (World Premiere) and Bash (Plan-B Theatre). Film credits include AESOP (Episodic Series), Kill The Babysitter (UK FrightFest 2020), Jewtah, Wildlife (Official Selection: Cannes Court Métrage 2015), Blessing, and Animae.
Robert Scott is also Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory. As a creative laboratory, FBTL creates experiential storytelling that fuses spoken word, movement, sound, and visual design elements throughout the creative process to tell visceral, whole-hearted stories. During the 2021-2022 Department of Theatre season, Robert Scott directed Liminal, the stage component of a partnership between the Department of Theatre, Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory, and Also Sisters. The stage play was written by Troy Deutsch, based on an original idea by Also Sisters—internationally-recognized filmmakers, multimedia storytellers, and Assistant Professors in Film and Media Arts—and developed with the assistance of local playwright Brandan Ngo and Plan B Theatre’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop. An upcoming film by Also Sisters, currently in pre-production, is another component of this collaboration.
In 2016, Flying Bobcat presented the World Premiere of Climbing with Tigers, based on the book by Nathan Glad and Dallas Graham. A new devised work involving animation and live action, Climbing with Tigers was adapted for the stage by Troy Deutsch and produced by Salt Lake Acting Company in collaboration with FBTL and the Red Fred Project. This inaugural production of Climbing with Tigers was featured in American Theatre Magazine in May 2016. In December 2020, Salt Lake Acting Company presented Climbing with Tigers online to launch SLAC’s digital platform; after viewing the virtual production, TheaterWorksUSA selected the play for distribution to classrooms nationwide in April 2021 via their new educational streaming platform.
Additional work in conjunction with FBTL includes Ronald & Edith by Connor Nelis Johnson, which was directed by Co-Artistic Director Alexandra Harbold (Best of Fest and Audience Award), and Strangers: a homo’s odyssey by Tom Roche (Outstanding Solo Performance) at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival 2021; Strangers was also selected as part of the United Solo Screen Festival. Both projects were written and performed by recent U of U alumni and co-produced by FBTL.
Past projects also include an original work created in collaboration with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Flying Bobcat, Allegory (2020 Re-Imagined), and Live Creature and Ethereal Things (2019), a dance performance inspired by The Red Fred Project, and the 2018 world premiere of Jump, a co-production with Plan-B in partnership with The David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists. In May 2015, Robert Scott collaborated with choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen, NOW-ID and NYC Playwright Troy Deutsch to create FEAST, a site-specific performance at The Great Saltair. Flying Bobcat collaborated with the Salt Lake Men’s Choir in September 2014 to create Lost in the Woods, a theatrical concert at The Masonic Temple. As former Creative Director at The Leonardo Museum in SLC, he created the POPUP@LEO program; a fusion of science, technology, and art, which featured three new devised theatrical productions, Senses 5, Love, and Mind Over Matter.
Directing credits include The View Upstairs by Max Vernon with Good Company Theatre; As You Like It, Tartuffe (adaptation by Ranjit Bolt), and Big Love by Charles Mee with the U of U Department of Theatre; SLAC’s New Play Sounding Series reading of Reykjavik by Steve Yockey; PLAN-B Script-in-Hand series reading of Quarter Horse by Rob Tennant; and, in 2016, the sold-out run of an all-female production of Hamlet in conjunction with the University of Utah Department of Theatre, featuring actors from the Actor Training Program and Musical Theatre Program.