Dr. Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies, web-walking, somatics and counter-tourism. With artist Helen Billinghurst, he is one half of Crab & Bee, who have recently completed an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth (funded by Arts Council England), a short walking project in the Isles of Scilly and a residency at Teats Hill slipway. They published their book, The Pattern, in 2020.In 'Living in the Magical Mode', (an edited collection of documents surviving from a discontinued book club), Phil starts from the insistence that "Magic is not a power or command over nature, but a relationship with nature" and goes on to explain his view of everything.Phil's most recent book, 'The Silversnake Project', includes three ecogothic novellas which show us individuals and societies coming apart at the seams in the face of an eerieness that is often hiding from us in plain sight. The toolkit at the end proposes walking, hypnagogic and ‘new ritual’ practices that draw on the novellas and invite reflection and reconnection. The whole book was written and devised as part of Phil groundbreaking research at the University of Plymouth. With Tony Whitehead and photographer John Schott, Phil recently published 'Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage'. He has also developed a ‘subjectivity-protective movement practice’ with Canada-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel, published in January 2021 as 'COVERT: A Handbook'. With Claire Hind and Helen Billinghurst, he co-organised the 2019 ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at the University of Plymouth - on which 'Walking Bodies' is based. As company dramaturg and co-writer for TNT Theatre (Munich), he most recently premiered ‘Free Mandela’, co-authored with TNT’s artistic director Paul Stebbings, about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Paul and Phil have recently written a book about TNT Theatre’s transformation from tiny experimental theatre company to global touring organisation.Phil is a member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, who published 'The Architect-Walker' in 2018. As well as 'Walking Stumbling Limping Falling' (2017) with poet Alyson Hallett, Phil’s publications include 'Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance' (Red Globe/Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 'Rethinking Mythogeography' (2018) (with US photographer John Schott), 'Anywhere' (2017), 'A Footbook of Zombie Walking' and 'Walking’s New Movement' (2015), 'On Walking and Enchanted Things' (2014), 'Counter-Tourism: The Handbook' (2012) and 'Mythogeography' (2010). He is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the University of Plymouth.You'd think he wouldn't have much spare time.
