Anna Deavere Smith

Born in 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland, Anna Deavere Smith is a playwright, actress, and professor. Smith studied acting at Beaver College (now Arcadia University) and later received an M.F.A. in acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California. She acted in stage productions at the beginning of her career, later appearing in numerous films and television series, including The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, For the People, and Philadelphia. Smith is known for her work as an actress and writer in the genre of documentary/verbatim theatre, which uses pre-existing materials such as newspapers, interviews, and journals as source material for the play’s content. Her most famous works in this genre include Fires in the Mirror (1993) and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994). Both of these plays belong to her On the Road series of one-woman plays, which draw exclusively from interviews Smith conducts with people living in communities in crisis. Smith boasts numerous awards and accolades, including a nomination for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Fires in the Mirror and Tony Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Play for her work in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. In addition, she was a recipient of the 1996 MacArthur Fellowship, as well as the 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama. She has also won two Obie awards. Currently, Smith is a professor in the department of Art & Public Policy at New York University, and she serves as director for the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.