ABSTRACT

Anna Deavere Smith is an actor, teacher, author, and playwright. She is perhaps best known for her one-woman plays about racial tensions:

Fires in the Mirror

(Pulitzer Prize runner-up and Obie Award winner) and

Twilight: Los Angeles 1992

(Tony Award nominee and Obie Award winner), which Ms. Smith created from interviews she conducted and which, in performance, required her to deliver her subjects’ words in their own voices. Her other writing includes a third play,

House Arrest,

and the book,

Talk to Me: Travels in Media & Politics,

which documents its creation. Her television and film work includes roles on

The West Wing, Presidio Med,

Robert Benton’s

The Human Stain,

and Jonathan Demme’s

Philadelphia

. Ms. Smith is the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur “genius” fellowship. This interview was conducted in February of 2004.