17 February
Anna Deveare Smith from Baltimore
Baltimore is a place with a rather illustrious history. It’s one of the oldest cities in the country, and in many ways, it’s got some of the primary heartbeats. Some of the famous residents, like Frederick Douglass, have inspired countless lives, and will do so for many generations to come. It’s easy to see why it’s a popular travel spot, with excellent accommodations and plenty of opportunities to sightsee, and catch up on history. The contemporary local scene is also extremely lively, with a thriving arts community that is always creating and reinventing popular forms of entertainment.
One of its more famous daughters these days is Anna Deveare Smith, whose work also inspires generations, and is also very likely to do so for some time to come. She’s most widely known for her work on the tv shows West Wing, the Practice, and Nurse Betty. However, theatre-goers and theatrical practitioners recognize her for her contributions to the form of live performance. She is a true pioneer, developing a new kind of theatre that is extremely powerful, engaging, and radically entertaining all at the same time.
She still makes new works of live performance, with Let Me Down Easy currently running all over the U.S. This show takes on health care, the body, and even death. Her work always deals with extraordinarily bold and large themes. It is also very topical and relevant, dealing with Yankel Rosenbaum and Rodney King, for example, and the work is astute enough that it remains relevant even ten years later. For her performances, she interviews subjects for her research, then she performs them. Her work then is to represent identities, but these are living breathing people, sometimes celebrities, and sometimes they can be sitting right next to you.
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