KH Del Rio Smith is a London-based multidisciplinary artist and Performance Maker with a background in Performing arts (Theatre, Music and Movement) and scenic & costume design.
Artistically, they are preoccupied with work that is socially engaged, and often use autobiographical archival material as a vehicle for exploring broader themes (Most recently: Sexual Assault, Violence against Women, Marginalised Identities, Disability, Humanity). Their artistic aim is to create work that transmits a message and provokes honest and open discussion and reflection on the themes discussed. Throughout their career, they have developed a proclivity for work with an experiential and immersive quality that disrupts the separation that traditional theatre encourages, submerges the audience, and challenges the passivity of spectatorship. Recently, their debut performance piece D E S C E N T (a raw, intimate, confessional performance that explores memory, discovery and childhood sexual trauma through storytelling, music and mythology).
D E S C E N T is an intimate, confessional, conversational performance that explores themes of memory, self-discovery, truth, and myth. The storyteller, KH exists in a liminal space, in which the only comfort can be found through the rediscovery of items they had hidden from themselves long ago and you, the audience. Using personal objects and artifacts, stories, and memories, underpinned by a score of original music from the time, and tied to the world of Myths, the nameless womxn asks you to journey with them as they descend into the depths of their own memory, interrogate events from their past and discover a truth that they had long since hidden from themself.
Originally performed as part of Cleave Festival at Goldsmiths July 2021, University of London, as part of Croydonites Festival 2022, and then developed at Camden People’s Theatre as part of SPRINT Festival 2023. It returned to Croydonites Festival 2023 as part of the London Borough of Culture programme.
