http://kingsriverlife.com/03/07/rogue-reviews/
From King's River Life Magazine
Every Job I’ve Ever Had
Reviewed by Heather Parish
There is a performer at the Rogue Festival who is known as The Reverend Nuge. He was, at one time, an ordained pastor who has since left the profession and cultivated a life as a secular performer. His shows are very entertaining and thoughtful and well worth the price of admission.
But for me, the real secularized pastor — the real shepherd of performing souls–of the Rogue Festival is Barry Smith. Up until now, his previous best work was Jesus in Montana, a piece looking at a time in his life where he sought the second coming of Christ the Lord on a compound in Montana. It was his best work seen at the Rogue — until this year.
Smith’s Every Job I’ve Ever Had surpasses his previous shows, offering up a funny, touching, and moving look at being a seeker and a wanderer in a world where one’s work defines one’s self.
It sounds pretty heavy — preachy, even. But, like the best sermons and testimonies, it isn’t. Smith’s exceptionally specific and honest writing structures his multimedia presentation of his life through work with a deft hand. He inspires laughter in the audience, but not out of sense of superiority or knowing cleverness, but rather through a connection that allows entire audiences to recognize themselves in Smith’s experiences. His way of landing a punch line and revisiting his former triumphs and tragedies digs deeper into the next segment of his story, opening up the audience’s sympathies bit by bit until the next thing you know, you’re feeling each step of his journey with him.
Smith’s writing is some of the smartest you’ll find at any fringe festival in the U.S. and the seamless way with which he integrates multimedia into his storytelling is magnificent. But even without his chosen format, Smith could take this story and tell it over a cup of coffee and still have people enraptured– simply because Smith gives so much of himself in an effort to reach out and connect with others, that you cannot help but to follow his lead and aspire to his kind of singular honesty and bravery toward life’s experiences.
Barry Smith is the best of the Rogue Festival. Here’s hoping he continues to mine the vast resources of his life in new and engaging ways. . . All the better for the rest to follow his lead.