1191 – 1255. The most celebrated playwright of the past hundred or so years and one of Christoté's most famous women. Allinon Smithson's arrival rejuvenated Dorlafan theatre. At the time it was threatening to disappear up its own backside with a stream of Cities Satires and petty farces. Smithson rediscovered and perfected another facet of Stayson Cooper's extremely mixed legacy: the use of theatre as political protest. The daughter of a lower-middle class family from Forgar, her background gave her a lifelong habit of dissent. She was strongly involved from late teens with the gender struggles which were building during the early 1200's, as well as the perennial battle against inequality. These themes infused her plays and gave them their dramatic impetus. She could also build highly realistic characters and deftly translate broad themes to a personal level – a skill which separates her from most of her many imitators.
The Hanging (1240), for example, is a tragedy railing against an iniquitous legal system and the economic pressures which make an innocent turn to crime. Her most famous play, The East Street Births (1226), tells of a woman forced to not only keep the baby born of a rape but to marry her rapist, and eventually be destroyed by him. The Garreday Marchings (1237) are a celebration of the Garreday Uprisings. It was also a partial rewriting of history, putting far greater emphasis on the woman of the revolution than had hitherto been granted. A fairly revolutionary play in terms of form as well. Veering away from the epic speeches of most historical pieces, it used fragmentary scenes and frequent and brutal on-stage action, with a ballad-singing narrator to sew the story together. Though mainly a tragedian, Smithson had a vein of black humour running through her work. Once she had got early tub-thumpers like To The Last Quarter (1216) out of her system, she incorporated complicated themes and plots.
The realism of her plays, as well as the controversial topics she addressed, made her a huge success almost from the start. She was less popular with the authorities, however. While none of her plays were ever banned outright – though a couple came close – the Domes were notoriously reluctant to stage any. They only relented after a free performance of The Mirrors in Rykes Gardens attracted huge audiences in 1224. Then they changed their minds again two years later when protests against The East Street Births, organised by the Torgun church, spilled over into serious riots. Ten years later they finally plucked up their courage again, and nowadays her plays are staged at the Domes almost as often as Stayson Cooper's.
Smithson remained popular up to her death, an icon of the women's freedom struggles, though retired from the theatre in 1247. Her swansong was on an epic scale, supervising a restaging of The Garreday Marchings on Garreday Eve. Again it was in Rykes Gardens, this time with a Domes cast and government funding. With fields literally set on fire and Smithson's inflammatory lines booming across the land, it is said to be the most spectacular performance the Cities has ever seen. Smithson fell out of fashion between the early 1200's and late 1300's, taste favouring either the frivolous or excessively gloomy. She is back in vogue, though, the current thinking claiming she is even better than Cooper.