Photo:Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher and author, whom many consider to have created a uniquely new form of theater, blending theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate reverie. Most of her plays take controversial subjects and present them from multiple points of view, and she has played as many as 46 characters in the course of an evening. Of her Broadway show, Twilight: Los Angeles, the New York Times said of her performance, “[she is] the ultimate impressionist: she does people’s souls.” Jack Kroll of Newsweek proclaimed the work “an American Masterpiece”. Deavere Smith has also acted in film and television; playing Nancy McNally, the National Security Advisor, on NBC’s former hit show The West Wing, and starring in the films The American President and The Human Stain.
Let Me Down Easy is Deavere Smith’s newest one-woman show. The latest in her series On The Road: A Search For American Character, it was inspired by interviews Deavere Smith held when she was a visiting professor at the Yale School of Medicine, where she became fascinated by the human body’s resilience and vulnerability. Her interview subjects for Let Me Down Easy came from dramatically different situations. On the one hand, she went to Rwanda to interview people from each side of the genocide: Hutus and Tutsis. On the other hand, she interviewed the head Coach of the UT Austin football team- winners of the National Championship. Other interviewees include: chaplains and doctors at Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany, a male escort, a stripper, the radiologists who have just opened the groundbreaking Proton Therapy Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and some residents in and around New Orleans, post Katrina. According to Deavere Smith “uniting these divergent voices is the awareness that none of us are promised tomorrow, and for the time that we are on earth, our bodies house a multitude of experiences and the truth about who we are.” Deavere Smith will be capturing this multitude on stage – a multitude that will tell us, through their own experiences, about how to live life to the fullest, regardless of what threatens to compromise our well-being. “This is a portrait of the moment of human resourcefulness.”
Deavere Smith’s work in the theater has garnered her several awards, among them the prestigious MacArthur Award, two Tony nominations and two Obies. Her books include Letters to a Young Artist, Talk to Me and several published plays. She is currently University Professor at New York University where she is appointed at the Tisch School of the Arts and affiliated with the School of Law. Deavere Smith was previously at Stanford University (1990- 2000), is founder of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, which was launched at Harvard and is now at NYU, and is on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, where she chairs the Committee on Film.
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Anna Deavere Smith |
Anna Deavere Smith |
Anna Deavere Smith |
Anna Deavere Smith |
Anna Deavere Smith |
Anna Deavere Smith |
Symposium C6 runs concurrent with 