Anna Deavere Smith

ADS doesn't waste time with wimpy, elementary, or patronizing tips and inspirations for an artist. Peppered economically with personal anecdotes, each essay instructs fundamental, practical, and philosophically persuasive work for an artist to do. She addresses process, feelings, sociality of art, business, physiology, responsibility, joy, belief, and so many specific tasks and values. Even while engaging many familiar ideas, I kept finding myself wanting to share and practice what I was hearing, as well as to occasionally practice a little push back. I would almost literally jump at a chance to sit and listen and talk with ADS about teaching and mentoring and work and art. And young artists. The book is passionately no-nonsense. (I also can't help picturing her delivering these letters in the style of the formidable National Security Advisor Dr McNally's interrupted-gala-dressed entrance to the Situation Room, WW S2E1, "Good evening everybody. Mike, could you have somebody send over some clothes from my office, please? I look like an idiot.") I recommend the audio version, read by the author.… (mere)

World Premiere run: Berkeley Repertory Theatre (2015) in a different form
Length: Full Length Play

The published version of this play is a combination of the original play, later revisions and scenes from the 2018 movie based on it. The play is somewhere between a play and a non-fiction journalistic research - the words used are the ones of real people but they are told by a single actor. I have half a mind checking the movie - I cannot imagine this actually working properly but who knows.

The play is part of a bigger project by the author - her series of plays "On the Road: A Search for American Character" had been started in the 1980s. This is the first play by her that I had ever read - and while I am not sure I want to see it, reading it actually works.

The main topic of the play is the school-to-prison pipeline in the US educational system - a topic that cannot be discussed if you do not incorporate the topics of race, mass incarceration and everything around them. Reading it in mid-2021 adds another layer to the whole thing - it made me wonder what else would the author add to this play if it was created today.

As it is, the play covers people from all walks of life - from a high school student who get arrested (for nothing) to a Native American man who finally got released from jail, from activists to judges, from a European teacher to social workers and James Baldwin, closing with the late John Lewis. It is a series of interviews without questions; real speeches and interviews (some published, some not), collected together into a narrative that looks disjointed but somehow manages to become a complete piece at the end.

The format is unconventional and I am still not sure it was the most effective one - I would have preferred a complete book, containing the same images and words but also containing some analysis. It it somehow works - it makes you stop and think and consider - and maybe as with most social commentary plays, that's what makes it powerful.

I wish that this play will read dated and irrelevant in less than a decade. Unfortunately I suspect that even decades from now, it will sound fresh and topical. And that is a shame.

Highly recommended.… (mere)

I appreciate the author's documentation of any issues related to our young people in this country, particularly the school to prison pipeline. However as a foster parent, I work to prevent another pipeline and that is the foster child to prison pipeline. Both these stories start with the environment that these children are growing up in, and I can tell you even when they are removed from that environment they seek it out because that is what is they know. You can call it an "adjustment disorder" or whatever label psychologists want to put on it but the kids boomerang back to poverty and violence even when they have a choice. I can't say having work in a school from a poverty stricken area that these kids are all angels. They are not. Some of them are headed to prison no matter what interventions are in place, and some of them are just mean, disrespectful kids. The ones that get hurt are the good kids that are in the line of fire. I will watch the HBO special, but I didn't find the book all that enlightening.
… (mere)