Anna Deavere Smith

Biography

Anna Deavere Smith, born in Baltimore, Maryland, is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. Her plays include Fires In the Mirror (1993), Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994), House Arrest (2000), Let Me Down Easy (2014), and Notes from the Field (2015). Deavere Smith’s work has been developed/produced most notably at The Public Theater (NYC), Cort Theater (NYC Broadway), Mark Taper Forum (LA), Second Stage Theatre (NYC), American Repertory Theater (MA). Anna Deavere Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was nominated for two Tony awards for best actress and best play and won the Drama Desk Award and Theater World Award for outstanding solo performance. Fires In the Mirror was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and went on the Drama Desk Award for an outstanding one-person show. Deavere Smith is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Fletcher Foundation Fellowship, Matrix Award, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. Smith is an alumna of the historic Western High School, an all-girls school in Baltimore MD. After graduating from Western, Smith studied acting at Beaver College (now Arcadia University) and received her M.F.A. in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California.

Career Highlight

In 2015 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Anna Deavere Smith for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities. She delivered a lecture entitled “On the Road: A Search for American Character”. She was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

  • Genre: Documentary Theater
  • Breakdown: 1W Black
  • Synopsis:
    • This play considers an ethnography of different cultures in the United States. Anna Deavere Smith spent countless hours interviewing over 300 individuals to get their perspectives to create her play. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 consists of unaltered monologues from her interviewees of multicultural identities. The play includes characters of different classes, professions, genders, and races, all of them giving their views on the riots that took place in Los Angeles in late April 1992 in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. For example, Smith interviewed former gang members, the aunt of Rodney King, a juror in the trial, the former mayor of Los Angeles, and members of the Los Angeles Police Department. She approached people less connected with the case but still with much to say, such as an appliance store owner, a lumber salesman, literary critics and scholars, and a former liquor store owner. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 relentlessly probes the language and the lives of its subjects, offering stark insight into the complex and pressing social, economic, and political state of the United States of America in the late 20th century.
  • Development/Production History:
    • Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 received its world premiere in May 1993, in Los Angeles, directed by Emily Mann, at the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, which had commissioned the work.
    • Broadway debut at the Cort Theater in April 1994, in New York City. Directed by George C. Wolfe.
    • Twilight: Los Angeles originally aired on PBS Great Performance in 2001, and again in 2012. Produced by Cherie Fortis and Directed by Marc Levin.
  • Photos:
Anna Deavere Smith as Henry Keith Watson in “Twilight: Los Angeles.” Watson was involved in the beating of the truck driver Reginald Denny, 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Anna Deavere Smith as Angela King, Rodney King’s aunt, in “Twilight: Los Angeles.”
Anna Deavere Smith as Young-Soon Han in “Twilight: Los Angeles.” After the Rodney King verdict, rioters burned her liquor store.
Anna Deavere Smith as Cornel West in “Twilight: Los Angeles.”
  • Plays
    • Fires in the Mirror (1993)
    • Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994)
    • The Arizona Project (2008)
    • On Grace (2014)
    • Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education (2016)

Reflection on Contribution to Anti-Racist Theatre

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is an incredible solo performance by Anna Deavere Smith. It’s truly fascinating that Deavere Smith is able to embody all of the individuals she interviewed. She must dress like them, think like them, sound like them, and act like them. She creates a world where each and every character is important from Rodney King’s aunty to the Asian convenience store owner. The costumes she chooses to use for each character are important because it also gives the audience an insight into who the character is and how they fit into the overall concept of the play. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 really challenges the basic public understanding of what a play is and how a play is supposed to be performed by having one person conduct interviews and create a play embodying multiple characters on stage. Anna Deavere Smith with this play has increased the public’s understanding of how different cultures operate in the United States. I’ve always known that black people were looked at as the lesser race in the United States and that was evident in how Rodney King was treated by the police. One thing I learned from this play is how much everybody is affected regardless of race, once the public decides to come together and take a stand. As a black woman, Anna Deavere Smith, through her one-woman show was able to have the platform to represent an entire city at its lowest. Her show was a symbol of hope for every young black person. It proves that the voice of a black person is powerful and that it should be used. To me, that is the definition of anti-racist theater.

Litchfield Ajavon; Film, Television, and Theater (Television Concentration) Major; Class of 2022.