Jun 6, 2023
In Part 1 of our episode on the
Bayview Opera House, we sit down with opera house
Programming Manager Ashley Smiley, (who goes
by "Smiley"). Smiley shares how her family ended up in San
Francisco. Her mom was born and raised in SF, but her mom's mom, a
mixed-race woman, came from Texas. Her family was run out of that
state by the KKK. That family landed in the Hunter's Point area and
ended up in the Fillmore.
Her maternal grandfather came here
from Haiti via boat. Upon his arrival, he bought property in San
Francisco, as that was possible at the time. Smiley's grandparents
met each other at Polytechnical High School. Her grandfather
was a longshoreman, but also a musician and songwriter.
Her mom went to Galileo, then SF
State, and now works for The City. Smiley was born at a rather
conspicuous time in history — just a week after the Loma Prieta
earthquake in 1989. Her mom says that there was a 5.4 aftershock at
the time of Smiley's birth.
Smiley grew up in Ingleside mostly,
and remembers going to the Bayview Opera House a lot early in
life. Her family moved around The City, and she rattles off a list
of the different schools she went to. It was at Lafayette
Elementary that she did her first theater show — Pirates
of Penzance. She mentions her "Jewish momma" from this time,
an early mentor.
After attending her first major
theater production, she became something like obsessed with the
production aspects of live performance. She'd played instruments
and was a cheerleader, but she found her passion in performing
arts.
She carried that passion into her
middle school days, where she started doing spoken word and poetry.
Work she'd done at her church gave her a background in writing, and
she used that to springboard to performing words on stage for
people.
In high school, when she went to
Lowell, she started doing bigger and bigger productions. It was
during this time that she was immersed in Black culture and
identity, and she learned that it was something she needed to lean
into. She says that it was "super empowering."
On the flip side, these experiences
contradicted what she had previously believed about the world,
namely, that racism had more or less been solved. She had wondered
why older Black folks were so upset. And so, at the same time that
she was discovering her own confidence and pride of being a Black
woman, she was starting to see the complexities of racism in the US
and San Francisco. Lowell, she says, had a lot to do with this
realization.
We end Part 1 with Smiley confessing
to how much time she spent away from her high school, the bulk of
it at the Brava
Theater in the Mission. She did spoken word and hip-hop
with the Colored Ink group. Meeting and witnessing performances by
so many of her inspirations left her thinking, I gotta be in this
world. And now, she is.
Please join us for Part 2 next week,
when we learn more about the Bayview Opera House and Smiley's time
there. We'll also meet two performers involved in opera house
programs.
We recorded this episode
at Bayview Opera House/Ruth
Williams Memorial Theatre in June 2023.
Photography by Jeff Hunt