Spotlight on Blue Sky Actor Adam
My name is Adam Smith. I am a freelance neurodivergent actor, musician, composer, performer, cabaret artist, MC, and facilitator. I work for various London based theatre companies run by/and for neurodivergent, learning disabled, physically disabled, autistic people.
In terms of my work with Face Front Inclusive Theatre, I joined one of the community groups, Blue Sky Actors as a participant back in October 2016. From the very beginning, I felt like I was in a positive and encouraging space. The reason for this is because it gave me a chance to meet new people, expand on my acting skills, performance skills, stage skills, panto skills, teamwork skills as well as entertain lots of different types of audiences. I felt like I was in a place where I can grow in confidence as an artist and individual.
In terms of Blue Sky performances, I’ve performed in many Christmas Pantos, including Peter Panto, The Jingle Book, The Christmas Panto That Goes Wrong, Christmas Island and many more. I’ve also taken part in educational, comedy and immersive shows at Blue Sky Actors, including The Unusual Suspects, Opposite Street, Charlie and the Awkward Factory and many more. It was really great expand on my repertoire of different performance genres, collaborate with my fellow actors and directors as well as make lots of incredible work.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we kept ourselves very busy during the uncertain times. We created a radio play via Zoom called Radio Blue. This radio play told various stories about the past, present and future as well as comedy and scary videos. We also did an adaptation of a Christmas Carol via Zoom called Ebluenezzer Scrooge. We also did online training films audiences called Nice To Train You To Train Your Nice. It was such a great opportunity to gain experience in being a film and voice actor which can be very different from acting on stage. It was great to have the two styles of stage acting and screen acting included into my repertoire.
It was thanks to Blue Sky Actors that I managed to land myself in professional acting projects with Face Front Inclusive Theatre, including Princess of the graveyard Palace, It’s My Move 2017 and It’s My Move 2018. It was really great for me to become a professional artist. It was also great to get to know the industry even more, tour to different schools, theatres, community centres as well as meet new people. It’s really great that we had neurodiverse, learning disabled, physically disabled, autistic people gaining professional paid acting work because neuro typical, non-disabled can learn so much though our lived experiences which are so valuable and important to the rest of society. Touring with Face Front Inclusive Theatre has helped me gain confidence in touring with other theatre companies on a national and international scale.
As well as my acting work, I’ve also had paid work as a musician. I have composed music to capture various atmospheric narratives for Blue Sky performances such as The Unusual Suspects and To Be Continued. I have also composed new opening theme tunes for performances such as Opposite Street. I’ve also with my own lyrics and composed Christmas songs for pantos such as the Jingle Book and Alice in Winterland. Furthermore, I’ve collaborated with other Blue Sky Actors such as Ellen Goody. In Christmas panto such as Christmas lsland, Ellen would write the lyrics and I will compose the music to accompany the lyrics. As a trained musician and composer, it has been great to incorporate my music skills into Blue Sky Actors and have an additional role in Blue Sky Actors.
Back in October 2024, I became a paid member of staff at Blue Sky Actors. I became an Assistant Arts Enabler. The job involves facilitating warm-ups and drama games, directing small groups of people in drama devising activities, performing with the participants and other staff members as well as helping participants with stage directions during the performances. It was such an honour for me to become a staff member because I felt like I had the power to help the participants at Blue Sky become more confident as people and artists as well as helping them to potentially become professional artists themselves. Also, as I’ve trained to be a co facilitator through the Transforming Leadership project at Access All Areas Productions, I’m really grateful to be able to take my training to drama groups outside of Access All Areas Productions and facilitate games and direct groups of people at Blue Sky Actors. I think it’s a privilege to be contributing to the rising and celebration of neurodiverse, learning disabled, physically disabled, autistic people taking on paid leadership roles in various industries, including the performing arts industry. The reason for this is because we are just as capable as non-disabled neurotypical people. We are talented. As mentioned before, We have valuable experiences that are useful to the world. We can reach out to other people who also deserve to have their voices heard and we have the power to make the world a much more equal and inclusive place.
