When my friend Peggy was just starting to write fiction about 20 years ago, she went to hear Alice Walker read at Women and Children First and slipped Walker a story of her own. Walker gamely sent back the piece with one sentence of advice: “You have a lot to learn.” (Or maybe it was: “You have a long way to go.”) “I did,” my friend says now, though she was upset and humiliated at the time. “It wasn’t an unkind thing to say.”
Smith, 51, has created three “documentary theater” pieces drawn from interviews with people in the midst of racial, cultural, or political conflict. First was Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. Next was Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. House Arrest is based on more than 500 interviews with Washington figures ranging from former secretary of labor Alexis Herman to Bill Clinton, with the words of long-passed presidents in the mix. She’s also appeared on the TV series The West Wing.
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And she does Studs Terkel. At a museum conference not long ago, “she became Studs Terkel, I swear to God,” said Historical Society president Lonnie Bunch in his welcome speech. Then Terkel, in his trademark red-checked shirt and red vest, scarf, and socks, introduced Smith, saying: “She captures not just the words of a person but the soul of a person.” And: “If Anna Deavere Smith can do me, she can do anybody.” As he finished speaking, Smith dropped to one knee in homage–good-natured, not mocking. That set the tone: casual, intimate.
Terkel was her last act, and she borrowed his scarf for it. In 1993, tape recorder by her side, she had asked him if there was a defining moment in American history. There was no one moment, he’d said, only accretions, and told about an experience with a disembodied announcer at the Atlanta airport and the lack of human responses to it. “Now we have humans imitating robots,” said Terkel through Smith, as she leaned back, alternating between a rumble and a shout. She ended with, “OK, kid, I gotta scram, gotta go see my cardiologist.”
Koret left, satisfied, hoping her car hadn’t been towed.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Janette Beckman.
