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November 06, 2004
'West Wing' star to deliver keynote to group
Anna Deavere Smith, actress, playwright, sees world as humanist
By Janet Forgrieve
Rocky Mountain News
November 6, 2004
Anna Deavere Smith has built several careers around her interest in people.
A self-described humanist and born mimic, the actress likely best-known to most as National Security Adviser Nancy McNally on NBC's West Wing, Smith is also a playwright, author and tenured professor.
Smith, who will keynote the Women's Foundation of Colorado's annual luncheon on Monday, recently took time - after the gym and a lunch where she ran into Walter Cronkite and before an afternoon meeting - to speak with the Rocky Mountain News.
"I'm interested in people and the world we live in," she said. "The forum I took to express my interest was acting because it came easily to me."
Her acting credits include roles on the CBS drama Presidio Med, appearances on ABC's The Practice and films such as Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.
In addition, Smith is a tenured professor at New York University, teaching in both the theater department and law school.
"But I think of my plays as the center of what I do - occasionally I do TV and movies," she said.
The women's foundation chose Smith because of the many human angles her work takes, especially issues that hit home for women and children, said foundation spokeswoman Stephanie Blackford.
And, she hinted, attendees may get a treat in the form of some of Smith's characters coming to life at the podium.
Smith's plays include Twilight Los Angeles, about the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict and the violence that ripped apart the city. Instead of using her own impressions, Smith interviewed hundreds of those involved in and affected by the L.A. riots.
The resulting one-woman show spoke verbatim the words of 46 diverse voices.
Taking a journalistic approach has led Smith into neighborhoods, homes and lives she might not otherwise have seen, she said. She talked to both blacks and Hassidic Jews while researching a play about racial tensions in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
"I don't presume to speak for somebody," she said of her stage efforts. "I'm trying to speak as them. But an audience is intelligent - they know I'm not them, can never be them. I'm telling you the words that came from them. It seems the most honest thing to do."
Smith also talked about the mission and state of art, and how she sees it changing, especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
As part of creating the Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue, Smith worked on a summer program at Harvard for three years for artists who came to create work about social change.
She's looking at re-creating the program at NYU.
"Now there's an even greater appetite among artists and audiences to use art as that kind of window, to really look at ourselves - (to use art as) the opposite of escape," she said.
"It's a new and interesting collaboration between artists and activists. Artists will need the credibility of activists and activists will need the creativity of artists."
Americans have lost much of their faith in public institutions, she said.
"We don't trust the media to bring us the truth, we don't trust our school teachers," Smith said. "I think that artists could also stand in what otherwise is not entirely claimed territory. If people thought artists were not reliable in the past, they ask now 'Is my doctor? Is my teacher?' "
That thought takes her back to Walter Cronkite. When she saw him while out at lunch, she added pursuing an interview opportunity with him to her "to-do" list.
"There is no one voice of reassurance anywhere in the world anymore," she said. "We're facing a profound ignorance, a profound unknown. I think the best position is humility - I want to learn things, so I meet people at universities, in life. Then I figure out how to put the pieces together."
Speaking softly but seriously about the work that has shaped her life, Smith lightened the mood when she talked about how she gets it all done.
"I have a lot of stamina," she said with a laugh, before adding more seriously "I also have a lot of different ideas, and I just try to act on those ideas."
If you go
• What: The Women's Foundation of Colorado's annual luncheon
• When: Monday
• Where: Adam's Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place, Denver
• Keynote speaker: Actress, playwright, author and professor Anna Deavere Smith, right
• Tickets: $80 for individuals; call 303-285-2965 or go to www.wfco.org
Posted by Jo at November 6, 2004 08:08 AM