MAGGIE SMITH
(NOT THE DAME)
Maggie Smith (she/her) is an actor, playwright, and comedian based in Chicago, Illinois. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, she began studying theatre at a young age, taking any performance class she could. Upon graduating high school, she moved to Chicago to pursue a BA in Theatre, along with two minors in English and Shakespeare Studies, at Loyola University Chicago. In her time at Loyola, she led two projects with their Second Stage Program, Rats: The Musical and Saint Louise, Pray for Us, the former a devised absurdist musical and the latter a staged reading of her two-act play. Along with leading theatrical projects, she performed in many MainStage Productions in the Newhart Family Theatre, and participated in student-led projects as a performer,
deviser, and writer.
She began her professional career soon after graduating, and has since been seen as a part of Eta Creative Arts' 51st Season in their remounted production of Everybody as the Usher, God, and Understanding. In August of 2022, she was accepted into the Second City Conservatory Training Program, where she will further her comedic training in September, 2022. Along with this, she is currently taking writing courses with their Training Center, where she is focusing on writing for sketch comedy and stand-up comedy.
As a writer, Maggie challenges herself and her audiences to process difficult topics through comedic lenses, choosing to focus on grief, longing, "goodness," coping, and unconditional love in an engaging manner. Along with her love for comedy, she takes her own life experiences to create casual representation of the queer experience. In order to depict an experience that she is familiar with, she prefers to write characters in stories where their identities are not the driving force of the piece. Because of this, she finds herself called to place queer characters at the forefront of comedies.
After all, that's what her life is.
Photo by Joe Mazza, bravelux