Memory as Muse : For Writer, Yesterday’s Work Is Today’s Play

Odd jobs don’t seem so odd to Tish Smiley. She has worked as a cook, cleaning woman, art therapist on a psychiatric ward, junior high school teacher, portrait painter, waitress and saleswoman. Like many struggling actors and actresses, she has often been willing to take a job--any job--if it meant her bills would get paid.

That versatile resume has proven invaluable in Smiley’s current position: playwright. Her experiences continue to provide her with ideas for theatrical productions, including “Head Trauma,” which closes Sunday at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks, and “The Cleaning Crew,” which opens at the same theater Dec. 11.

Smiley’s stint as an art therapist on a psychiatric ward helped her to develop “Head Trauma,” which tells the story of a woman who suffers a brain injury and her struggle to recover. “Crew,” a comedy, is based on her experience as a member of a cleaning team.

It was an unfortunate experience that led Smiley, 36, to deal with the issue of brain injuries. Twelve years ago, her younger brother lapsed into a coma for a month. He was hospitalized in a room with five other brain-injured patients. Smiley was intrigued by what the medical community has not learned about their conditions.

“There is still so much that is not known about head traumas,” Smiley said. “Nobody knows how aware someone is when they are in a coma. Nobody knows why they come out of a coma. When they do come out, often they can’t talk at all. There are so many areas of the country where these people are written off as retarded.”

Although Smiley did extensive research, which included observations and interviews at Western Neuro Care Center in Orange County, she was concerned that members of the audience might be offended by the feisty nature of Collette, the main character in the play. But most of the reaction from patients and professionals who work with brain-injured patients has been positive. Smiley said, “Some of the patients told me what would be insulting would be to have a Pollyanna-type character in a wheelchair.”

Mike Boyd, director of Statewide Survivors Organization, a group that lobbies on behalf of the disabled, said he was somewhat offended by the way the play “portrays disability in a negative fashion.”

Nonetheless, Boyd said, he recommends “Head Trauma.” “Most people don’t think about disabilities until it happens to them,” he said. “The play brought a lot of issues to the surface that are usually overlooked, like alcoholism and seizures. One of the good things the play brings out is how disabled people are treated differently by different people.”

“The play puts us in touch with the suffering and pain that everybody involved with a brain-injured person goes through,” said Sondra Bennett, who teaches acting classes for brain-injured patients at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood.

“It also takes a look at the difficulties a caretaker must go through and explores the feelings that people with injuries often fall into--self-pity, low self-esteem, feeling like life is over. But your life doesn’t have to end if you have injuries, and at the end of the play, the main character shows us that, by the choice she makes,” Bennett said.

Because Smiley also plays the lead role in “Head Trauma,” she researched the process by which patients learn to communicate again. “The main character cannot talk. She can only make sounds. But she makes herself very clear.”

“She has all the reasons to make excuses about life and hang it up,” Smiley said. “Instead, she decides to hang up her excuses. . . . It’s a reminder that we can have results in life, or have all the reasons why we don’t have the results.”

By contrast, Smiley describes “The Cleaning Crew” as “pure fun.” The play centers on the antics of a group of cleaning people who are more interested in their personal pursuits than their work. Inevitably, chaos ensues.

“The cleaning business is a gas,” Smiley said. “You cut corners wherever you can. The play demonstrates, in a humorous way, the struggles of everyone with a small business.”

Smiley said some of the incidents that occur in the play really happened while she was a cleaning woman. In fact, actress Mairi Hovis, who plays the role of Donna, used to be Smiley’s real-life cleaning crew partner. “We first met on the job,” Smiley said, “and have been friends ever since.”

Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Smiley moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago to pursue a career in acting. In her search for roles, “it was so much easier to write a scene than to look for one. All the really great scenes have been done to death.”

She soon found herself writing material that she wanted to perform. As a result, she and writer Del Shores put together “The Original Scene Book,” which they published themselves and sold through the Samuel French bookstore in Hollywood.

“As writers, we have the potential of reaching so many people,” Smiley said. “So it’s important to have pieces that leave people reconsidering their own lives and wanting to be the most they can be.”