The Back Room is a love letter of sorts, dedicated to the two great romances of my life: Florence, Italy, and Michael, my partner of thirteen years. 
I met the former in 1990 as a young art student, and, as so many Americans throughout the centuries have done, quickly claimed its ochre walls and abundant art as my own. I embraced some of its best-held secrets, from Santo Spirito’s perfectly blank façade, to Jacopo Pontormo’s heart breaking, unheralded High Renaissance paintings and frescoes. Our affair lasted a full school year, and when we parted ways I was red-eyed and miserable for weeks.
I fell for the latter in 1996 during graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, CA, and we’ve been together ever since. After years of bragging about my first love, Florence, I finally brought Michael there to see what all the fuss was about in 2005. It was at the moment I introduced him to my favorite Florentine painting, Pontormo’s The Trans- portation of Christ, that I knew this relationship would last: Michael burst into tears as I had fifteen years before, his breath needing to be caught as mine had all those years ago.
I wrote The Back Room upon our return from Italy. It’s about the power of art to connect disparate people, to touch strangers and scratch an itch within them they didn’t know existed.
Thanks for watching!
-- Greg Ivan Smith, Director  (January 2008)