Dawna Lee Heising of EOE on Time Warner Cable Covers Rogue Machine Theatre Benefit by Tucker Smallwood

Multi-talented actor, musician and author Tucker Smallwood performed at a fundraiser for the Rogue Machine Theatre's third season on Friday, November 20, 2009.  “Tall Tales and Country Blues”, created and directed by Tucker, was a memorable event full of laughter and tears, unforgettable stories and the raucous energy of a Delta Juke joint.  Tucker is a member of the Rogue Machine Theatre Group, which is located at 5041 Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.  The Rogue Machine Theatre performs original plays and will be conducting the first annual 24-hour Play Festival on Saturday, November 21^st at 8:00 PM.  Visit the Rogue Machine Theatre website at:   http://www.roguemachinetheatre.com/ or call:  323-960-7774.

Tucker Smallwood, the eldest son of an educator and diplomat, was born in Washington DC.  He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1967 with a degree in speech and television production.  Tucker began directing television for WBAL in Baltimore and in late spring of 1967, he was drafted into the Army. He was commissioned as an Infantry Officer and served as an OCS Tactical Officer at Fort Benning, GA, before undergoing Vietnamese language training and jump school. He later commanded a Mobile Advisory Team during the Vietnam War. After recovering from his injuries, Smallwood moved to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

Tucker established a career as a performer in Broadway productions (Mahalia), films and television. He was the Emmy-nominated host of CBS’s news magazine ‘CHANNEL 2: The People’ in 1974. He also developed an enduring relationship with Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, creating characters in six productions over the next eight years, along with other roles on Broadway and in regional theater productions.

His films include The Cotton Club (1984), Contact (1997), Deep Impact (1998), Larry David's Sour Grapes (1998), Traffic (2000), Quigley (2003) and Spectres (2004). On television, he has been a regular and made guest appearances on many series, including Space: Above and Beyond, Millennium, Babylon 5, The X-Files, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Friends and The Sarah Silverman Program.

He often plays military characters and, as a science fiction fan, he always longed to play a Star Trek alien. He came close on Voyager when he played the human form of a disguised alien, but it was not until Enterprise that he played a fully alien character, a sympathetic Xindi, for several episodes.

A life-long musician, Smallwood performed all vocals for the delta blues album "Incarnation: "The Robert Johnson Project", a tribute to the music of Delta Blues King Robert Johnson, with 15 tracks written by or associated with Johnson. Incarnation was recorded in NYC in 1981 and featured many notable musicians, including Arlen Roth and Jerry Jemmott. It was finally released on CD in 1995, produced by Clark Dimond's Dimond Studio in Colorado's Sangre de Christo Mountains. Tucker also played guitar on several episodes of "Space: Above and Beyond" and his Millennium character sang "Goodbye Charlie" to volunteers before euthanizing them.

In addition, Tucker is the author of ‘Return to Eden’, an anthology of 33 personal essays describing his tour of duty in Vietnam, his life as performer and his return to Vietnam in 2004.  In 2006, the MP3 version of ‘Return to Eden’ was first runner-up in the audio/spoken word category at the Fifth Annual DIY Book Festival, which celebrates independent authors and publishers. Return to Eden is available both in soft cover and as an audio book MP3. Each continues to garner praise from both veteran and civilian readers. More information is available at: Lulu.com/tuckersmallwood

In this new millennium, he has continued to create an eclectic body of work, both in drama and comedy, including a physically challenging season as the Xindi Primate Diplomat on ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’. His most cherished experiences in recent years have been film projects for emerging artists (independent films), allowing him to explore characters rarely available to him on big budget studio productions.  In 2009 he began hosting the hybrid television/radio horror anthology series As Darkness Falls.  For more information on Tucker, please visit:  www.tuckersmallwood.com

About Eye on Entertainment
“Eye on Entertainment”, a division of Eye on Excellence™ Productions, is aired twice weekly on Time Warner Cable in Southern California. The EOE team covers entertainment events, film festivals, red carpets and award shows, and features interviews with successful people in all walks of life, exploring the traits they have in common. Dawna Lee Heising is the executive producer and host of EOE.  She is a long-standing member of SAG & AFTRA and is Ms. Universe 2009.  The show is produced and directed by John C. Alsedek, who is also the writer, director & producer of the horror anthology series “AS DARKNESS FALLS”, which runs on Time Warner Cable. The EOE photographer is David McNeil, who is a former executive with United Artists and was one of the developers of Pay-per-View.  For more information, please visit http://www.eyeonentertainment.tv/.