Capitol Hill, Circa 1966 -- Matt Smith's Solo Show Full Of Seattle Memories

----------------------------------------------------------------- Theater preview

"My Last Year with the Nuns," tonight through May 25 at New City Theater, 1634 11th Ave.; 323-2878. -----------------------------------------------------------------

In the Capitol Hill of Matt Smith's youth, the rambling old houses between 15th and 23rd avenues were filled with large Catholic families, whose children attended St. Joseph's Grade School.

"There were four kids in my family and that seemed really small," Smith laughs. "A family down the street had 17 kids."

For pocket money, Smith and his pals delivered The Seattle Times after class. And if he had a beef with another guy, they duked it out behind the Red Mill burger joint.

Capitol Hill is a very different place today than it was in 1966, when Smith was 13. Now it's a trendy, pricey enclave where straight and gay Gen-Xers mingle with well-heeled yuppies - a neighborhood "nothing at all" like the "Catholic village" he recalls from childhood.

Smith brings his old stomping grounds to life again, though, in a solo show premiering tonight at New City Theater. Chock-full of memories for Seattle natives, "My Last Year With the Nuns" also exposes the tensions and prejudices of a city in transition.

"The show's really about race, religion and puberty," explains Smith, "all the things you don't want to bring up at a cocktail party."

Life as an eighth-grader

Working in a physicalized, sinewy, improvisational style he honed as one-half of Stark Raving Theater (the other half is Ed Sampson), Smith dramatizes his life as an eighth-grader.

"Nineteen sixty-six was my last year at St. Joe's before going to Seattle Prep," noted the blond, wiry Smith, over tea in a Capitol Hill cafe. "A lot of the show happens in this little shack where the paper boys would pick up their newspapers and hang out."

If that sounds like a perfect setting for a sentimental journey, a "Summer of 1942"-style reverie about carefree, boyish camaraderie, think again.

"The neighborhood was red-lined by the banks," Smith says. "On one side of the line, the Catholic families could get loans. On the other side lived the blacks, who couldn't get loans. The shack was right on the line."

Nineteen sixty-six was a time "when the whole society was on the verge of changing. There was this white exodus to the Eastside suburbs, because more blacks were moving into the neighborhood. And as young people strayed from religion, the Catholic Church was weakening."

By playing himself and 15 other characters, Smith hopes "to take a straight, honest look at my own racial and sexual attitudes at the time, and portray them without judgment. But I'll tell you, I'd be appalled if my own two daughters had those attitudes today."

Smith doesn't soft-sell his adolescent bigotry. He recalls "going to Volunteer Park at night. Even then, it was a place where gay people would meet for sex. I'd see guys I knew `queer bashing,' beating up homosexuals. I never joined in, but I was this innocent kid who just accepted it as the way things are."

As he grew older, Smith learned the value of tolerance: "I'm lucky the people I chose to listen to steered me away from all that other stuff. That's not who I am anymore, but it is where I came from."

Black lit class opened his eyes

At Western Washington University, a class in black literature helped raise Smith's consciousness. "We had to write this 10-page autobiography, and a lot of stuff about my background just poured out."

Smith didn't begin acting until 1985, when he studied with Roberta Maguire, "the godmother of the Seattle improv scene." In 1988, he and Sampson pulled together their first show, "Here," about their fathers. They later performed four other original, autobiographical pieces, and now both work with Transformance Theatre, bringing interactive drama into corporate settings.

Doing a one-man show in a New City Theater solo festival spurred Smith on to forge "My Last Year with the Nuns." Why did he want to revisit that particular year?

"I guess it's because a therapist once told me that most people get stuck in their adolescence. I thought maybe this would be a way for me to get beyond my puberty."