Auriol Smith


Auriol Smith is an English actress and theatre director. She was a founder member and associate director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London. She co-founded the theatre in 1971 with her husband Sam Walters, who became the United Kingdom's longest-serving artistic director. Walters and Smith stepped down from their posts at the Orange Tree Theatre in June 2014.

Early years

Whilst taking a degree in drama at Bristol University she became President of the Green Room Society at the newly founded university Drama Department. This was followed by a year in America as a Fulbright Scholar, before making her professional debut at the Hampstead Theatre Club in January 1960 in Harold Pinter's first play The Room.

Orange Tree Theatre

After extensive experience in repertory theatres and a year in Jamaica setting up a drama school and theatre, she and her husband Sam Walters co-founded the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London in 1971, where she played many classic and modern parts. "We enjoyed doing small-scale productions in Jamaica, and hoped that eventually we'd run that kind of theatre in England. Then, when we returned in 1971, we decided that now was the time and Richmond was the place.".

Performances

In the old theatre:
  • Penelope in A Slight Accident Lunchtimes, January 1976
  • Find Me 1977
  • Teacher in The Primary English Class November 1979
  • Woman in Living Remains Lunchtimes, 9–25 July 1982
The new theatre opened in February 1991. Her Orange Tree performance credits there included:

Directing

From 1991 to 2014 she also regularly directed at the Orange Tree. Her credits included:

Other acting and directing work

During 1990, as part of a busy year, she played Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World at the Royal Exchange Manchester, and toured North America for the ACTER company in The Winter's Tale playing opposite Paul Shelley as Leontes. She also appeared in Christine Edzard's film The Fool.
In the West End for producer Bill Kenwright, Smith directed Dead Guilty by Richard Harris starring Hayley Mills and Jenny Seagrove; and Michael Redgrave's The Aspern Papers with Hannah Gordon. She also directed a Japanese version of Dead Guilty in Japan.
At the Theatre Royal Windsor directed Shadow of a Doubt and Canaries Sometimes Sing. At the Northampton Theatre Royal she directed Arthur Miller's Broken Glass, David Mamet's Oleanna and James Robson's Mail Order Bride; while at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough she first directed Love Me Slender.

Television and audio

She worked extensively on radio including Pinter's 1960 radio version of his sixty-minute play The Room for the BBC Third Programme. For ten years she presented Listen with Mother on BBC Radio 4 and was a long-serving member of the Radio Drama Company. Her BBC radio credits include Alan Bennett's Forty Years On, the role of a tipsy summer partygoer in Ellen Dryden's romantic comedy Forgetting Rosalind, and East of the Sun by Carey Harrison.
For Naxos, Smith recorded the roles of Alice in Henry V with Samuel West, and the Duchess of York in Richard III with Kenneth Branagh. She has also acted on television in Kavanagh QC, One Foot in the Grave, Peak Practice and Doctors, among others.

Honours

She and her husband Sam Walters received the Freedom of the London [Borough of Richmond upon Thames] in December 2014.

Private life

Auriol Smith is the wife of Orange Tree co-founder and former artistic director Sam Walters, whom she met while doing pantomime at Rotherham in 1962. They have two daughters: Dorcas Walters, who was principal dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet and is now a Gyrotonic instructor, and Octavia Walters, formerly an actress, now a sports injury masseur and hypnotherapist.