Brotherly love: Meet Blake Smallen from Jobsite’s ghost tale

Jobsite Theater’s new production, the shock drama-slash rock musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, is a true ensemble piece. Although everyone has their own song, their own moment, the eight cast members work together to create a visceral spider’s web of interaction and intrigue.

The script was written by Stephen King, who knows something about shock, and awe, and when to spring them on an audience.

“Hearing the name Stephen King, my expectation was that it was going to jump to some crazy, gory story,” says Tampa actor Blake Smallen, who plays Drake, a tough-talking country boy who may or may not be one of the titular siblings (no spoilers here).

“And it is of course a violent story, and there are definitely many elements of horror, but overall it’s a drama. A story about mourning, and about not repeating the sins of the past. And learning from others’ mistakes.”

It’s the seventh Jobsite show for Smallen, 26. His first was 2021’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; earlier this year he was in the cast of Macbeth.

Image: Ned’s Event Photography.

An alumnus of Alonso High School, Smallen went on to the University of South Florida and a BA in Mass Communications. He minored in Theatre – which is, after all, a form of mass communication.

“I was always very shy,” he admits, “up until I started doing theater, when I was a junior in high school. And at that point I fell in love with it. And I’ve been doing it since.”

He’d also been playing guitar and singing since childhood, and at one point thought music might be the road he would follow in life. “I definitely had a passion for getting up there and telling stories, that I really couldn’t find a way to do with music. Whatever limitation that was.”

Music plays a major role in Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. Singer/songwriter John Mellencamp wrote the songs, a mix of rock, blues and country; he and King collaborated closely on the play.

The action takes place on and around the front porch of a rustic and run-down cabin in the woods. Somebody knows what somebody else did last summer (or, in this case, many years ago).

The live band is discreetly staged on the porch; microphone stands are planted at strategic spots around the set, for cast members to use.

Photo by James Zambon.

“At first,” Smallen relates, “it was a weird conceit that we had to be OK with – but we realized that we have to be OK with it, if the audience is going to be. We found that we just have to go with it.

“These microphones are a part of this world! Everything you see is part of the story we’re telling, and the more we’re OK with it, the more everyone else is going to be fine with it too.”

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County debuted in Atlanta in 2012. King has re-tooled the story over the years – Jobsite’s version looks, and feels, markedly different from earlier productions.

Directed by David Jenkins, this is literally a world premiere.

“Overall, the biggest challenge was not having anything done previously laid out for us, that we could really reference,” Smallen says. “So we were doing this a lot on our own. There were other versions, of course, but no real recordings of the full thing.”

A good challenge was creating the parallel worlds that the script calls for, “and finding moments of just tension where we’re not saying anything. Because there’s another story going on next to us. We’re finding moments where we’re telling a story without saying anything or really even moving that much.”

“Blake has really come into their own these past few years,” declares Jenkins, the company’s founder and artistic director. “It’s been a real joy to witness the growth from being one of the ‘kids’ to basically being a stalwart these days.”

Although he’s not averse to one day working with one or more of the area’s other professional theaters, Smallen’s heart belongs to Jobsite. “I know there are artists who work with a lot of different theaters,” he explains. “There’s a lot of opportunity here in Tampa. Although, of course, the arts are suffering everywhere.

“However, I’ve found that there’s a community of artists there that I tend to gravitate towards.”

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County runs through Nov. 9 in the Shimberg Playhouse, at the Straz Center in Tampa. Find performance schedule and tickets here.