Roy Brocksmith began his career at the age of three performing on the bar at Hap Kuhl's Tavern in Quincy, Illinois. As a boy soprano, he sang in churches, schools, and local radio and television programs. At 16, he started teaching at the local children's theater and later married his high-school girlfriend.
He toured the US for two years in the Oberammergau Passion Play of Richmond, Virginia, before returning to attend Hannibal LaGrange Junior College, Culver-Stockton College, and graduating from Quincy University in 1970. During this time, he directed for the community theater, Pragressive Playhouse, and founded the Great River Theater Workshop.
As a director, he was taken to New York by a Ukrainian anesthesiologist in 1969, where he was joined by his wife and son, Blake, born on August 5, 1966. He became a librarian at the Lilliam Morgan Hetrick Medical Library at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in Manhattan and was on the board of the American Association of Midwives.
His regular job ended when he received his AEA union card-playing opposite John Carradine in "The Stingiest Man in Town," a musical based on Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" and narrated by then-Mayor John Lindsay at New York's Town Hall.
On the legit stage, he made his Broadway debut in "The Leaf People" for Joseph Papp and appeared in "Herr Tartüff" with Mildred Dunnock, "Stages" with Jack Warden, and "Threepenny Opera" as the Ballad Singer in Papp's Lincoln Center revival.
He also appeared in "The Three Musketeers" as the King of France, off-Broadway shows included "Polly," "The Beggar's Opera," "Dr. Salavy's Magic Theater," and "In the Jungle of Cities" with Al Pacino. He starred in the Broadway-bound "Swing" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
At the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he appeared in "Arms and the Man," "As You Like It," "Our Town," and "Don Juan." This last garnered him the Kudos Award from the Minneapolis critics and the production was brought to the Delacourt Theater in New York, receiving international praise.
He directed Foreman and Silverman's "Africanis Instructus" for Lyn Austin's Lennox Arts Center and his adaptation of Feydeau's "A Flea in Her Ear" was presented under his direction at Baltimore's Center Stage.
His unusual staging of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" gave the Alaska Repertory Theater a major box-office and critical hit and was chosen out of 100 entries to be presented at the Joyce Theater in New York that season.
He also appeared as Thurio in the national tour of John Guare's musical version of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and made his California debut starring opposite Gena Rowlands.
In 1987, he formed the California Cottage Theater with partner Michael Liscio, presenting only new works, including "A Cold Day in Hell," "Box Prelude OPUS #1," "Matinee," "The One Less Traveled," "A Necessary End," "Ripe Conditions," and "Letters from Queens."
The Cottage was unique because it was the only professional theater heater in the country under AEA jurisdiction for presentations in a private home. By its closing on February 17, 1996, over 8,000 people had attended performances.
Brocksmith also appeared on several episodes of "3-2-1 Contact" and on an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Sadly, he died of kidney failure on December 16, 2001.
