Ms. Smith goes to Washington

Interview, Sept, 1996 by Mark Marvel

More than a decade ago, Stanford professor Anna Deavere Smith took one small step toward revolutionizing American theater: She bought a tape recorder and started to interview people. She then edited the transcripts and dramatized their stories onstage. (She has credited Interview's founder, Andy Warhol, and the way he used the tape recorder for this magazine, as one of her inspirations.) Marrying her writer's gift for storytelling with skills gleaned from her classical training as an actor, Smith hit on a unique and powerful way to monitor the pulse of American culture.

In her powerful one-woman shows, Smith has taken on the volatile issue of race in America by assuming the roles of everyone from a Lubavitcher rabbi to a suburban housewife. Lately she has been turning her ear to a different race, the one for the White House, and there's no telling what myths she will explode as she focuses on such subjects as the relationship between the press and the American presidency. After Smith goes on the campaign trail this fall, the result will be a new performance piece scheduled for 1997.

MARK MARVEL: The New York Times called you "the ultimate impressionist," saying of your work, "She does people's souls." You're also one of the foremost artists to address issues of race.

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH: Although my two best-known works [Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992] have to do with race, I wouldn't say my goal is to get under the skin of racism in America. The works are part of a series called On the Road: A Search for American Character. When I started this series about fifteen years ago, I gave myself that big umbrella. Part of the challenge now is to help my audience expect and accept that I might talk about something other than race. The question remains: Will I be able to do that, or am I trapped by the fact that I am a black woman?

MM: What do you think?

ADS: I don't know. But I guess I'll find out. [laughs]

MM: You've said that you approach your work from the perspective of "not knowing." Your current work in progress is referred to as the "press and the American presidency" project. This is a subject that seems made for your search for American character.

ADS: Yes, Character is sort of beyond right and wrong. Nixon, for example, had character. Richard III had character. Character is about the ability to make one's identity have an impact.

MM: But Nixon seemed such a loser, lacking any kind of charisma.

ADS: Charisma is something else. Charisma is the ability to attract attention. That's not necessarily character.

MM: One of the things you do brilliantly in your work is shift among so many characters.

ADS: Well, everybody has a different view, and perspectives nail down certain points. Once we see where everybody is, then we learn that the truth is somewhere else.

MM: You force members of your audience to confront their own views and to consider those of others. And people don't leave the theater going, "I feel great. Aren't people great?"

ADS: Obviously that can't be my goal because it wouldn't be true. In Twilight: Los Angeles, Cornel West [the African-American activist and scholar] says that "hope is looking at the evidence and saying, 'It doesn't look good.' And then saying, 'So what?'" I'm gonna go beyond that. I'm going to intoxicate people, make them move with me to make it better. That's another aspect of the human experience. We have the ability to get people to come along and say, "Well, let's try anyway."

MM: You never seem to take sides. Where do you think this comes from?

ADS: A friend of mine asked me, "How far would you go? Would you interview a Nazi?" And the answer is yes.

MM: Why?

ADS: Because I want to know what I don't know. But the people that end up in my shows are also people who have genuinely enchanted me. I was enchanted by [former L.A. police chief] Daryl Gates [one of the characters in Twilight: Los Angeles]. I wasn't out to nail Daryl Gates. I was enchanted.

MM: Many of the people you interview genuinely want to tell you things. Is it because no one else Is listening to their side of the story?

ADS: I don't know. Certainly I give people the opportunity to speak. But in the end, it's not so much that I succeed at getting close to the subject. i try to create a situation in which the subject comes close to me.

MM: It's a kind of psychoanalysis, isn't it?

ADS: Well, Shoshana Felman [author of The Literary Speech Act] says people talk and talk until they have the experience of themselves. If that's true, then I let them talk until they have that experience - and that's the moment I use in my performance.

MM: I was wondering if any of your subjects have ever been upset over your portrayal of them.

ADS: I will say there was one person in particular: Roslyn Malamud [a character in Fires in the Mirror]. But Roz was also the first to congratulate me when the reviews for Fires in the Mirror came out - before my agent, before my mother, before anybody. And we still write to each other, and she invites me to her children's weddings. But she was very critical of me on 60 Minutes.