Jesse Smith is not like most professors at Tufts. Perhaps it's because his office has a giant, life-sized photo of himself using a floor buffer on the door. Perhaps it's because his classes are often taught not in a normal classroom, but at the Scene Shop on 66 Colby Street, where instead of pencils and paper, students use jigsaws and screw guns. Perhaps it's because instead of a suit and tie, his traditional outfit is overalls or shorts and his trademark jester hat.
Or perhaps it's simply that his classes are "just freaking awesome," according to sophomore Catherine Wilson.
As the technical director of theater at Tufts, director of the Scene Shop and a lecturer for many technical theater courses, Jesse - he prefers to go by his first name, and requested that he be referred to as such in this article - is involved in almost all the aspects of Tufts theater.
"In theater, play and work is sort of the same thing," Jesse said.
Jesse's all-encompassing involvement in theater dates back to his undergraduate days at Emerson, where he originally intended to pursue acting rather than technical direction. Soon, however, he changed his mind.
"I started doing work study in the scene shop, and I did that for two years," he said. "At the end of my second semester [of] sophomore year, I took a couple classes [in technical direction], realized I liked it a lot more, swapped over and ended up getting my degree in that."
Studying theater at a B.F.A. school like Emerson, is vastly different than studying theater at a B.A. school such as Tufts, Jesse said. "You really focus much more in-depth on what you're studying," he said. "Theater's the sort of thing that will just suck your life away."
Luckily for Jesse, he was actually interested in the discipline that was "sucking his life away". "When it came to theater, I was always on time, hardworking, thorough, diligent," he said. "I always got good grades in my theater classes and did good work in those, but everything else, I didn't really pay attention."
Jesse didn't bother to hide his devotion to theater when at college. "When I started [non-theater classes] at the beginning of the semester, I'd say, 'At some point in this semester I'm going to disappear for about two, two and a half weeks,'" Jesse said.
After whichever show he was working on at the time closed, Jesse would return to class and do any extra work his professor required in order to make up his absences. "I definitely made theater my priority and somewhat to the detriment of my other classes, but always made sure I wasn't going to fail them," he said.
Though his primary focus is theater, Jesse has another passion that he has pursued since being a child: working at the Luethie-Peterson Camps.
Set throughout the world, the LPC Camps were founded in 1949 "as a project for peace in the wake of World War II" in order to "foster international understanding and community responsibility among young people," according to the camp's Web site.
"I've been going to it pretty much my whole life," Jesse said. "My mother used to direct... I went as her kid and a camper, and when I was 18, I went as a counselor for the first time. I've been going ever since as a counselor, and now I'm a director."
Each July and August, Jesse works as a director at a different camp throughout the world. "There's one in New Hampshire, one in Maine, one in Norway, Sweden, France, Great Britain. We've even done camps in Estonia and Poland," Jesse said.
The other 10 months of the year, however, Jesse's life revolves around theater. After graduating, he worked for several professional theater companies, including the Arizona Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Lake George Opera. While working for Hartford Stage, Jesse decided to attend graduate school to get his M.F.A. in technical design at the University of Connecticut.
It was at UConn where Jesse worked on one of his favorite plays to date, "Red Noses." "What I remember fondly about it is when I first got to the designs, I felt like I was being set up for failure, because it was so far beyond anything I'd ever done before," Jesse said. "I didn't have the faintest clue how to even start tackling the project, but then I did, and I achieved it. And so that particular production holds a feeling of victory for me."
After graduating from UConn, Jesse came directly to Tufts rather than going back to theater companies. "I love the atmosphere in a college setting," he said. "There's more freedom in what you can choose to produce. You're not trying to make money or work off a subscriber base, and so you can do slightly more off-kilter or outrageous productions and not have to worry about losing funding."
He also enjoys great satisfaction watching students' talents in theater evolve throughout their college careers.
"I also just really like watching students grow and learn - coming in as 17 or 18-year-old freshmen who don't know all that much - and within two to three years, become burgeoning technical directors," Jesse said.
Jesse models his classroom around his own ideal learning experience. "The professors I have a hard time dealing with are those who think that because they're a professor, they're supposed to know everything and can't admit that maybe there's something about their job that they don't know, or maybe that a student might figure out solutions better," he said.
Ideal professors, according to Jesse, "don't feel like they need to know everything," he said. "The teachers that I liked are the teachers who would welcome your questions... and when something beyond the scope of their knowledge came up that they didn't understand, they were able to admit that and move on."
Jesse incorporates this vision into his own classes, along with a sense of humor. "I definitely try to teach as much as I can a little more 'Socratically' than 'lecture-esque'," he said.
The he added, "I just made both of those words up."
