Just days before her one-woman production of "Let Me Down Easy" opens at New York City's Second Stage Theater, Anna Deavere Smith was the subject of an extensive feature in The New York Times Magazine (Oct. 4).
In "Let Me Down Easy," Smith explores the power of the body, the price of health and the resilience of the spirit as she channels such notable individuals as Lance Armstrong and Ann Richards as well as others who are not so well known.
Susan Dominus, a regular contributor the magazine, writes this about the film and TV actress who has been a Tony and Pulitzer-nominee on the stage: "It’s in her hybrid capacity as playwright-documentarian-actress that Smith ... has had the biggest impact."
She adds, "Smith’s work has been highly influential, most notably (but not only) in the theater world. A handful of performers have imitated her documentary technique or fashioned their own versions of it."
Dominus notes that Smith, who came from a family of teachers, went to college thinking she would be a linguist. And even though she ended up in the theater, she never gave up her interest in language and speech.
She writes, "A theater critic once wrote that Smith doesn’t impersonate characters so much as she does impressions of their souls. As lovely as that sounds, it’s not what she’s striving for. Her project, since the ’70s, she told me, has been about trying to understand 'the relationship of language to character.'"
Smith speaks in the Bryan Series Feb. 28 (3:30 p.m.).



