ARTicles vol. 7 i.1: Ms. Smith Goes to Washington

The Theatrical Journey of Anna Deavere Smith

by Sean Bartley

Many Americans recognize Anna Deavere Smith for her roles in The West Wing and The American President. In theatre circles, the story is different. Her one-woman shows have earned two OBIE awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and Newsweek’s declaration that she is “the most exciting individual in American theatre.” What is all the buzz about?

In her plays, Smith struggles with the central conflicts of a torn nation. Not only does she tackle incendiary events like the race riots of Crown Heights and Los Angeles, but she does it alone, playing dozens of characters and moving seamlessly from presidents to death row inmates. In any given performance, she portrays more characters than most actors do in a lifetime.

After years as an acting professor, Smith burst onto the theatre scene in 1992 with Fires in the Mirror, her chronicle of the Crown Heights riots. When a Hasidic driver ran over a seven-year-old Guyanese-American boy, violence erupted. Hours later, an angry mob murdered a young Hasidic professor. Clashes between Jews, African Americans, and police officers continued for days.

In the wake of the violence, Smith conducted hundreds of interviews with residents, politicians, and pundits. The purpose was not to cull information, but character: “I needed evidence that you could find a character’s psychological reality by ‘inhabiting’ that character’s words … I knew that by using another person’s language, it was possible to portray what was invisible about that individual.”

Smith’s solo performances explore language as deeply as politics. Her mastery of a character’s language, achieved by continuously playing back taped interviews, gives her an avenue for understanding any individual. Smith draws this approach from her grandfather’s assertion that “if you say a word often enough, it becomes you.” Through this rigorous study of a person’s words, anyone becomes playable. In Fires in the Mirror, Smith moves from the Reverend Al Sharpton to families of the riot’s victims, from New York’s most powerful rabbis to street youth at war in Crown Heights.

The portrayals are unflinching. Smith makes no attempt to clean up her subjects’ attitudes or speech. “Um” and “uh” are crucial elements of her dramaturgy. In fact, Smith is more interested in moments of inarticulate searching than in polished sound bites. Each of her plays fits within a career-spanning framework for linguistic exploration that she has dubbed “On The Road: A Search For American Character.” Her work, she says, “Is not about a point, it is about a route. It is on the road. Character lives in the linguistic road as well as the destination.”

Fires in the Mirror succeeds because of Smith’s refusal to take sides in the Crown Heights struggle. Smith gives voice to dozens of perspectives, never allowing one viewpoint to dominate. Closing the piece with Carmel Cato, father of the dead seven-year-old, the play expresses the lingering emotions of the riot’s participants: pain and bitterness.

While previewing Fires in the Mirror (which would later play at the A.R.T.), Smith hit upon the source for her next groundbreaking play. In April 1992, an all-white jury acquitted the four white police officers who had brutally beaten Rodney King. Violence and looting engulfed Los Angeles. Despite the fact that thousands of National Guardsmen had been sent to keep the peace, Smith rushed to L.A. to conduct more inteviews. The resulting piece, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, cemented Smith’s status at the center of political theatre.

Smith refused to see the L.A. riots in terms of black and white. Twilight presents audiences with voices forgotten in the media blitz: innocent Korean-American store owners whose shops were looted, Mexican-Americans who rioted alongside their Black neighbors, and ministers trying to stop the spread of violence. At the play’s conclusion, L.A. native Twilight Bey shares her hope for understanding: “I see darkness as myself. I see the light as knowledge and the wisdom of the world and understanding others…I can’t forever dwell in darkness.”

Twilight became a national sensation. When the play performed at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, the audience included President Clinton and Vice-President Gore. Before Twilight’s tour was up, it would claim an OBIE, a Drama Desk award, two Tony award nominations, and a nod for the Pulitzer Prize. Smith also teamed up with George C. Wolfe for a PBS version.

Smith’s solo performances explore language as deeply as politics. Her mastery of a character’s language … gives her an avenue for understanding any individual.Instead of resting on her laurels, Smith tackled an even more ambitious project. House Arrest, four years in the making, chronicled the role of the media in American life. President Clinton’s relationship with the press set the backdrop for a sprawling play, reaching back to the days of Abraham Lincoln. Smith’s fear of the modern press’ power is urgent. “If those who have power own the news, create our fantasies, and ultimately own history,” she warns, “the promise of democracy can become frail.”

For House Arrest, Smith took on another diverse group of interviews – from Gary Hart and Anita Hill to journalistic superstars like George Stephanopoulos and Ed Bradley. In the final scenes, Smith presents her smoking gun: candid interviews with Presidents H.W. Bush and Clinton. For the first time, Clinton speaks openly about his emotional reaction to the Whitewater scandal. Bush, munching on a chocolate chip cookie, produces a chilling one-liner: “As long as the economy is good, everybody is fat, dumb and happy, we might not need a President.”

But even an enormous project like House Arrest wasn’t enough to drain Smith’s creativity. During the play’s development, she also founded Harvard’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue. Bringing together international multidisciplinary artists, Smith envisioned not a think tank, but a “think and do tank.” For three summers the group convened in Cambridge, presenting their art and engaging in dialogue on current events.

During her career in academia, Smith has also become an important author. In her book Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines, Smith describes her years in Washington creating House Arrest. Talk to Me is equal parts memoir, media criticism, and manifesto. Using the words of legendary broadcaster Studs Terkel, Smith proves the “difference between communications and communication.” Smith juxtaposes her own writing with the transcripts of her interviews, showcasing her theories on language in action and strategies for getting an interviewee to open up into uncensored speech.

In her most recent book, Smith passes the torch onto a new generation. Letters to a Young Artist is a candid portrayal of the struggle to make art that grapples with challenging issues in an era of escapist entertainment. Designed as a series of letters to the imaginary youngster “BZ,” Letters to a Young Artist is a call to arms. Smith shares her own tough artistic decisions, begging a new generation to follow her ambitious example: “I’m not just addressing you; I am calling you out – asking you to make yourself visible. We need you!”

Much has changed in the two decades of Smith’s “On The Road” project. Her timely plays and books have also evolved, constantly exploring language, character, and theatrical form in new ways. This fall, Smith drives “On The Road” in a new direction with Let Me Down Easy. What can we learn from her latest adventure? What is her take on the American Character of 2008? What new road will Smith take us down with Let Me Down Easy?

Sean Bartley is a second-year dramaturgy student at the ART/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.

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