K Butterfly Smith
Biography
K Butterfly Smith
Actress. Writer. Filmmaker. Alternative Healer. Activist.
K Butterfly began her career as an actor and director in 1991 when she changed her major from Sociology to Theatre. From that time to present, K Butterfly has worked as a stage manager, props mistress, production manager, actress, filmmaker, writer, director, and theatre teacher.
In fall of 2002, K Butterfly created RaTheatre and began writing and directing for the stage and screen. Since that time, she has written four plays and six films. In 2003, she began working with the Babatunde brothers, Akin and Obba Babatunde as stage manager. She toured with Akin Babatunde and Documentary Arts to Paris, France and Geneva, Switzerland as the production manager for the musical Blind Lemon Blues in 2004.
K Butterfly’s passion to educate has taken her from teaching on the college level to middle school to theatrical and film production for the past 15+ years. In recent teaching years, she included film as a component of her curriculum so that her students would receive a meaningful, relevant and engaging education. RaTheatre combines film with other art forms such as live theatre, to tell new stories that uplift the human spirit – “changing how we view ourselves”.
From 2012 – 2016 RaTheatre worked in partnership with NBHT, Inc., to produce the Urban Raw Festival – a day-long event that educates the Little Rock community on the plant-based lifestyle, local crafted food and goods, individual gifts and talents while also encouraging the people to live sustainably. 2016 celebrated its fifth year in existence.
In 2013, K Butterfly received the Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship for her play, In a Year’s Time. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette nominated K Butterfly and her former business partner as Women Entrepreneurs of 2015 for their work as owners of Solfood Kitchen Cooperative, a fresh-causal, plant-based, worker-owned cooperative. This past summer K Butterfly spent this summer in Venice at Cornerstone Theater Summer Institute Residency program, working on, “Ghost Town”, an original play written by Juliette Carrillo. From her residency at Cornerstone Theater, K Butterfly will write a play recounting all the roles a community plays in domestic violence. Room No. 9 at the Chrysalis Inn is one of many to be produced with that theme. K Butterfly continues to follow her dreams writing stories that illustrate how transformation unfolds constantly in each of our lives. She is committed to providing a voice to many women who have experienced domestic abuse and childhood trauma.
