She, the people

Anna Deavere Smith talks about empathizing with Rodney King, the LAPD and President Clinton.

By Nan Goldberg

Nov 1, 2000 | Anna Deavere Smith changed American theater forever in 1991, when she opened her one-woman show, "Fires in the Mirror," about the riots that broke out between Jews and blacks in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier that year. Smith interviewed hundreds of people -- both well-known and unknown -- who'd witnessed or participated in the riots, edited down those interviews and then performed them, using not only her subjects' words, but their mannerisms, rhythms of voice and unique use of language, to form a human collage, embodied in one woman, depicting a neighborhood as it tore itself apart. It was both a virtuoso performance and a remarkable act of racial, cultural and personal empathy.

Since then, Smith has produced two more solo performances: "Twilight Los Angeles," which similarly dramatized the 1992 riots that broke out in L.A. following the first Rodney King trial; and, this year, a meditation on the American presidency and the press called "House Arrest." Both were part of a series of theater performances that Smith calls "On the Road: The Search for American Character." Smith has just published a book, "Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines" -- partly a memoir, partly a discussion of her technique and partly a synthesis of the knowledge she's gained over almost 30 years of talking and listening to people in all walks of life, in and out of crisis. Salon caught up with Smith by phone at her New York apartment.

You've often spoken of language being a window into the soul. Why language? Why not body language, or silences, or facial expressions, or how we treat our pets?

That's several questions. First, you're absolutely right. Why not silence? Why not expression, why not body language? And I would be very, very interested in all of those. However, as a young person I was particularly interested in the world as a verbal place, and loved to listen. I have a feeling that my mother must have read to me very, very expressively when I was a little girl, because she tells me how I would ask her to say certain parts of the story again or sing "Jesus Loves Me" again, so I think I liked the way that things sound. That's just my nature. I had a profound, unquenchable desire to hear language.

And then I suppose as you begin to chisel down what you're gonna do with your life, you at some point just decide, "I'm gonna follow my passion." And on that journey, I happened by accident into an acting school and my first Shakespeare class, and I had an extraordinary experience, following an exercise that our teacher gave us, telling us to speak any 14 lines of Shakespeare over and over again "until something happened."

The 14 lines I picked were from Queen Margaret in Shakespeare's "Richard III" -- sort of a curse, really, that Margaret was giving to Richard's mother.

And I became so involved with the exercise that I literally saw Queen Margaret in my little room. That set me on a lifelong quest, because my imagination hadn't been that ripe since I was a kid. I wanted to have that gift as big as I could, and if language had something to do with it, then I was gonna learn everything I could about it.

So in your case, the words were powerful enough to almost conjure up somebody ...

She was conjured.

I just wanted to know about people, and at the time I was interested in social change. I was taking acting class instead of playing basketball. I wouldn't have been very good at basketball; I'm so glad I took acting class!

And when I took that acting class, I thought, My God, look, these people are changing. And if they can change, maybe society can change. So I thought I was studying acting as an entry to social change, a metaphor to explore. And then I tripped over Shakespeare and never came back to some form of social activism.

You don't think of what you do as a form of social activism?

Yes, to some extent, but I think I'm more interested in many sides of the story than an activist is.

I guess that's why I see what you do as social activism: You're always pointing out that there isn't only one point of view, and that's a very radical thought to most people.

I accept, I can see that it is a form of activism, but temperamentally, most of the activists I know are intensely on one side. They have to be, because they're fighting for a cause. If you're fighting to end police brutality, you're not going to spend an afternoon with Daryl Gates, the police chief of Los Angeles, and enjoy it.

Did you?

I did. Not a whole afternoon, but some time.

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