Anna Deavere Smith

Playwright

• Born: September 18, 1950
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland

Actor, playwright, professor, and author

Smith is an acclaimed playwright, actor, and author. She is known for her one-woman documentary plays exploring the people involved in violent incidents such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and contemporary issues such as the American criminal justice system.

Areas of achievement: Education; Radio and television; Theater

Early Life

Anna Deavere Smith was born on September 18, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Anna and Deavere Smith. Smith’s mother, an elementary school principal in the Baltimore school district, taught Smith and her four siblings to read and write early. Smith looked to her mother for guidance while growing up amid the civil rights movement and Vietnam War during the late 1960s. In 1968, Smith graduated from Western High School and enrolled in Beaver College (later called Arcadia University) in Pennsylvania. In 1971, she graduated from college with plans to pursue an acting career.

In 1973, Smith was accepted to the master of fine arts program in acting at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco, California. There, she studied the art of acting and learned the fundamentals of conservatory theater. She landed her first stage role in 1974’s The Savage, Horatio at ACT. In 1976, Smith graduated from ACT. Shortly after, she made her professional acting debut in Alma, the Ghost of Spring Street at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in New York. She won more roles in other New York plays, such as Mother Courage (1980), performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and On the Road (1982), performed at Clear Space Theatre in New York and then at Berkeley Repertory Company in California. In 1984, she returned to New York to star in Aye, Aye, Aye, I’m Integrated at the American Place Theatre. The next year, Smith was asked to be a speaker at the National Conference of Women and the Law in New York City.

Life’s Work

During the early 1990s, Smith began exploring documentary theater. She became concerned about riots and wanted to document the story behind incidents of unrest. In 1993, Smith published her documentary play Fires in the Mirror, based on the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, New York. Fires in the Mirror is a one-woman play in which Smith portrays multiple characters based on real people who witnessed or took part in the riots. In 1993, Smith won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for Fires in the Mirror. She also was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Following the success of Fires in the Mirror, Smith produced and wrote her second documentary play, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. The one-woman play, based on the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was far more provocative, because it stresses the social and economic disparities present in multiethnic communities in Los Angeles. In 1994, Smith won a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Twilight. In 2005, she gave a performance that included her most famous character from Twilight, a Korean liquor store owner affected by the Los Angeles riots, at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Convention.

Smith also worked as a university professor and author. From 1990 to 2000, she taught drama at Stanford University. In 1996, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her creative work as a playwright. She also held teaching positions in the Department of Performance Studies and School of Law at New York University (NYU). In 2000, Smith published her autobiography, Talk to Me: Listening between the Lines. In 2006, she published a book for aspiring actors, screenwriters, and artists, titled Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind. Shortly after, Smith won the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship for her activism on civil rights issues throughout her career. In 2009, Smith won a Fellow Award from United States Artists for her contributions in the theater arts. In 2021, she held the position of Full Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Smith had several film and television roles as well. She played national security adviser Nancy McNally on The West Wing from 2000 to 2004. Other acting credits include daytime soap opera All My Children (1983), feature film The American President (1995), and HBO’s Life Support (2007). From 2009 to 2015, Smith had a recurring role as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus on the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie. In 2013, she was awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for the arts. As part of her documentary project called the Pipeline Project, Smith interviewed hundreds of people to gather perspectives on and bring attention to poor youth who are at risk of being incarcerated. The resulting play, Notes from the Field, garnered widespread acclaim, including being named by TIME Magazine as one of the Top Ten Plays of the Year in 2016. The film version of Notes from the Field aired on HBO in 2018 and was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award.

Significance

Smith’s plays Fires in the Mirror and Twilight have been widely studied in American and African American studies departments at major universities. These works’ investigation of social and economic ills makes them timeless. Smith depicts the frustration, anger, and confusion related to classism and interethnic tensions in poor, urban communities. Both plays invite readers and viewers to connect to the characters and to consider the many factors involved in the violent riots.

Bibliography

Smith, Anna Deavere. Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind. New York: Anchor, 2006. Print.

Smith, Anna Deavere. Talk to Me: Listening between the Lines. New York: Random, 2000. Print.

Smith, Anna Deavere. Talk to Me: Travels in Media and Politics. New York: Anchor, 2000. Print.

Smith, Cherise. Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper, and Anna Deavere Smith. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print.

Von Zumwalt, Nate. "From the Classroom to the Prison Cell, Anna Deavere Smith Gives Voice to the Forgotten." NYU Tisch School of the Arts, 25 Nov. 2019, tisch.nyu.edu/tisch-research-news-events/news/anna-deavere-smith-school-to-prison-pipeline-notes-from-field. Accessed 19 July 2021.

Zarrilli, Phillip, ed. Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.