November 19, 2008
Actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith may be best known for her role as Nancy McNally, the national security advisor on NBC’s former hit, The West Wing. However, her experience as an actress, writer and producer extends way beyond the small screen. She will be perform a concert version of her play, Let Me Down Easy, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 30, in Dever Auditorium at Westfield State College.
The event is part of the Westfield State College Foundation Speaker Series, which is free and open to the public.
Smith has been featured in several films, among them, The American President, where she played the press secretary to Michael Douglas's president. She was featured in Robert Benton's film, The Human Stain. She appeared in Dave and Rent. She was a regular on the CBS series Presidio Med, and had a recurring role on The Practice.
She co-starred in HBO's 2007 film Life Support, which starred Queen Latifah. She has just completed work on Rachel Getting Married, a new film by Jonathan Demme, starring Anne Hathaway.
“Anna Deavere Smith is a pioneer and intellectual force in American theater, in addition to being a widely known actress,” Evan S. Dobelle, president at Westfield State College, said. “The college is pleased to be able to offer a venue in Western Massachusetts for her many talents.”
Let Me Down Easy had a recent widely acclaimed run at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge. The play explores the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. This play was inspired by work Smith did at the Yale School of Medicine, where she was a visiting professor. While at Yale, she created a performance for medical grand rounds, called Rounding It Out (2000).
It has been said that Smith created a new form of theater. When granted a prestigious MacArthur Award, her work was described as “a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie.” Looking at controversial events from multiple points of view, she combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through her performance.
Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles are two of several plays performed and created using her journalistic technique, and, like Let Me Down Easy, are part of an ongoing series that Smith calls On the Road: A Search for American Character. Other works in the series include House Arrest, which deals with the American presidency, and Hymn, a collaboration with world famous choreographer and dancer, Judith Jamison, for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The New York Times in reviewing her Broadway show Twilight: Los Angeles, about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, said of her performance, “[she is] the ultimate impressionist: she does people's souls.” Jack Kroll of Newsweek proclaimed the work “an American Masterpiece.” She does hundreds of interviews while creating a play. Using verbatim excerpts of the interviews, she has performed up to as many as 46 people in the course of an evening.
Smith performed Twilight: Los Angeles around the country, as well as on Broadway. The play received two Tony nominations, an Obie, a Drama Desk Award, a Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics, and numerous other honors. She produced, wrote and performed the movie version of Twilight for PBS.
Another of her plays, Fires in the Mirror, examined a race riot that occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (1991) when age-old racial tensions between black and Jewish neighbors exploded. It received an Obie Award, numerous other awards and was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize. She performed the play around the US, in London and Australia. The film version of Fires in the Mirror was also broadcast on PBS.
Her latest book is Letters to a Young Artist (Vintage Random House). Her book, Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines, is based on her observations of time she spent in Washington, D.C. To prepare for that book, she followed both President Clinton and Bob Dole on their 1996 campaign trails.
Her articles and writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, O Magazine, Fortune, The Drama Review and other publications.
Smith is currently a professor at New York University, appointed in the Tisch School of the Arts, and affiliated with the New York University School of Law. She also was Ann O’Day Maples Professor of the Arts at Stanford University where she taught from 1990 – 2000. She also taught at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California.
She recently taught, at the invitation of Oprah Winfrey, at Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy For Girls in South Africa.
Smith founded and directed the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, which was originally funded, in large part, by the Ford Foundation. She was The Ford Foundation's first artist in residence (1997). The Institute was launched at Harvard University, where it was held for three summers (1998, 1999, 2000). The Institute is now being re-developed at New York University.
Smith has received numerous honors and awards, including the Kitty Carlisle Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts from Americans for the Arts in 2007.
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