The Hamilton College Performing Arts partners with Hamilton's Diversity and Social Justice Project and the Department of Theater to open the Contemporary Voices and Visions Series with selections from Anna Deavere Smith's play Let Me Down Easy on Friday, Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m. at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts. Let Me Down Easy — a play about the resilience and fragility of the human body — is the latest installment in Smith's ongoing series of one woman shows, On The Road: A Search For American Character.
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright and author, who has created a unique form of social theater, described as "a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie." Looking at controversial events from multiple points of view, Smith's plays combine the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through her performance. She typically conducts hundreds of interviews while creating a play, then using verbatim excerpts of the interviews, she performs dozens of voices in the course of an evening. The New York Times said of her performances, "[she is] the ultimate impressionist: she does people's souls."
In one scene of Let Me Down Easy, Smith becomes former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, eating a meal as she frankly discussed the treatment regimen for a cancer that was fated to kill her in a few months. In another, Smith portrays the passionate, intrepid mother of an 8-year-old cancer patient named Micah. "I am here on the portal," Micah's mother said, "between life and death."
Smith's first play, Fires in the Mirror, examined racial tension between blacks and Jews that culminated in race riots in Crown Heights Brooklyn in 1991. It received numerous awards and was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize. Twilight: Los Angeles, about the 1992 riots in that city, followed the next year to equal critical acclaim. Both are part of an ongoing series that Smith is calling On the Road: A Search for American Character.
Other works in the series include House Arrest, which deals with the American presidency, and Hymn, a collaboration with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The newest play in the series, Let Me Down Easy, was inspired by the Yale School of Medicine, where Smith was visiting professor and presented a performance for medical grand rounds, Rounding It Out (2000). As part of her preparation for Let Me Down Easy, she traveled to Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa to do research on the effects of the AIDS pandemic in those countries, and on the genocide in Rwanda. She also went to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina to do interviews for the play.
Smith is University Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. From 1990 to 2000, she was Ann O'Day Maples Professor of the Arts at Stanford. She has won numerous awards for her work including two TONY nominations and the MacArthur Award. In 2006, she was granted the Fletcher Fellowship for the way her work advances the legacy of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
This performance is supported by the Winton Tolles Lecuture Fund and the Diversity and Social Justice Project. The Project fosters a diverse community by promoting rigorous, interdisciplinary intellectual activity necessary for social justice movements and characteristic of a liberal arts education.
Tickets are $15 for adults,$10 for senior citizens and $5 for Hamilton students. Group discounts are available. For more information or to purchase tickets call the box office at 859-4331 or visit www.hamilton.edu/college/performingarts.
