Sunday, October 04, 2009
Anna Deavere Smith Takes On Health Care in One-Woman Show
NYTimes.com: "In a bare, fluorescent-lit dressing room at the Second Stage Theater in Manhattan one afternoon in August, the actress Anna Deavere Smith was running lines. For any actor, learning lines requires considerable focus, but for Smith, who delivers every word of “Let Me Down Easy,” her one-woman show about health care and the body, it’s like a mental martial art."
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3 comments:
This article had a ton of information flying at you. In terms of Ms. Smiths style, I think it's really cool that she wants to spend so much time making sure she gets the words exactly right. I think it really helps to keep the interviewees exact intentions alligned etc. Most people don't really focus on that, just the message of the line, the motivation and get most of how its written. but if she can really feel her lines and make sure she gets them 100% right, thats awesome.
the article then goes on to describe her early work, her influence, her stepping outside the bounds by attending a predominately white college. Also how she behaves as a person. There was just so much in there it was kind of hard to focus on it all. She seems very passionate about her work. Most plays on health care might come off as boring, but i think her development of this show will be entertaining and enlightening.
I really admire Smith's devotion to portraying people accurately. I've never really thought of people's speech as poetry but this article made that concept very clear. Every pause and inflection is important. And what interesting is that how she is speaking is how someone else spoke naturally without a thought to their cadence and then she has to go back and work so hard at what everyone does without a thought. I thought the whole article was interesting but that point of precision stuck out in my mind.
Smith not only focuses on the poetry of her characters words, but fully embodies them in the process. Watching her perform, you see a total body transformation as she changes characters and often times this happens almost instantaneously. It is difficult enough to learn a script for a one person show (even if you've written it yourself), but she also learns the physical and verbal "ticks" of each person she interviews. Every breath, pause, and guttural noise is expressed in Smith's performance so well so that you can easily believe she is actually this person. What strikes me most about watching her perform is her ability to transcend race and gender. Even though Smith is a tall, African-American woman, you are easily able to suspend your disbelief and believe she is a small, elderly, white, Jewish man.
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