Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a work of documentary theatre comprised of monologues derived from interviews that the playwright, Anna Deavere Smith, conducted with citizens of Los Angeles whose lives were impacted by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The riots began in response to Rodney King’s first trial, which concluded with the jury moving to acquit all four white LAPD officers accused of using excessive force when they arrested and beat him in March 1991. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a one-person play, first performed by Smith herself, in which she assumes the personas of her interview subjects to present divergent viewpoints that illuminate the state of racial tension, systemic oppression, justice, and injustice in Los Angeles in the 1990s.
The Prologue consists of one interview delivered by Rudy Salas, Sr., a Mexican American sculptor and painter based in Los Angeles. Salas speaks about how his personal experiences with racism and police brutality growing up as a Latino man in Los Angeles taught him to view white people as his “enemy.” Salas’s monologue establishes systemic racism, police brutality, and an “us versus them” dichotomy as central problems in late 20th-century Los Angeles.
Act One: The Territory presents interviews that further develop the extent to which systemic racism and police corruption impact the experiences of Los Angeles’s minority communities. These interviews also expand on the issue of the “us versus them” dichotomy. Smith’s interview with Stanley K. Sheinbaum, former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, describes how the LAPD condemned Sheinbaum’s attempts to listen to the concerns raised by gang members involved in the gang truce negotiations, accusing Sheinbaum of siding with the enemy. The negative response leads Sheinbaum to question why a person “ha[s] to be on a side” in the first place. Michael Zinzun, a representative for the Coalition Against Police Abuse, speaks about his personal experience with police brutality, which cost him his eye. Mike Davis, an LA-based writer and urban critic, investigates the “us versus them” dichotomy, noting how his own experiences with law enforcement have been favorable and absent of the dehumanizing violence the police seem to reserve for people of color. Theresa Allison, a founder of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (Mothers ROC) and mother of gang truce architect Dewayne Holmes, talks about the common occurrence of the LAPD apprehending young Black and Latino men on false or exaggerated charges. Cornel West, a renowned public intellectual, analyzes the role that race, class, and gender play in Los Angeles’s current state of crisis.
Act Two: Here’s a Nobody shifts the play’s focus to Rodney King’s attack. It opens with the voice of Angela King, Rodney King’s aunt, who shares personal anecdotes of Rodney as a young boy and speaks about the impact his beating has had on their family. She criticizes the media’s attempts to turn the public against her nephew by portraying him in a negative way that is not representative of his true character. Act Two’s title comes from Angela’s observation that her nephew’s attackers felt justified in beating him so violently because he was just “a nobody,” and they had assumed their actions would have no repercussions.
In another interview, Sergeant Charles Duke, a member of the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics Unit and the LAPD’s use-of-force expert, suggests that Powell only beat King with a baton so many times because he had a weak, ineffective grasp on the instrument. He also explains how the police force increased their use of batons after the Police Commission banned upper-body-control holds; this was due to a report of increased deaths in Black people whom officers subdued with this type of hold. He suspects that Daryl Gates, who was police chief at the time, ordered officers to engage in more incidents like King’s to get back at the Police Commission for banning upper-body-control holds.
Act Two also presents interviews with Josie Morales, a witness to King’s beating who was not called to testify in court; an anonymous male juror, who describes the threats and harassment he and the other jurors received after delivering their verdict of acquittal on all counts; and Gil Garcetti, district attorney of Los Angeles, who explains how people’s willingness to trust that the police are there to protect them makes police excellent court witnesses.
In Act Three: War Zone, Smith presents a series of interviews told from the perspective of the riots’ participants and victims. Korean American shopkeepers, such as Chung Lee and Richard Kim, describe how their stores were looted and destroyed during the riots. Black characters like Allen Cooper, Katie Miller, and Paul Parker view the riots as the Black community’s justified response to the racism and police brutality that Black people experience on a daily basis. Congresswoman Maxine Waters states that “riot / is the voice of the unheard.” In contrast, the riots inspire fear and outrage in many of the play’s white, privileged characters. Judith Tur is a news reporter who shows Smith her video recording of the beating of Reginald Denny who was targeted and attacked by four Black men for being white. Tur makes bigoted remarks about the Black rioters and refuses to sympathize with their frustrations. Elaine Young, a real estate agent for rich celebrities, finds herself in hot water after a man accuses her of making flippant remarks about the riot. An anonymous female college student recalls being scared for her life before launching into a longwinded tangent about how broken up her father would be if he drove one of his vintage cars into the city and one of the protestors threw a broken bottle at it. Finally, Daryl Gates complains about his reputation as “the symbol / of police oppression / in the United States” while trying to defend his failure to be on post at the time the Simi Valley trial verdicts were announced.
One significant sequence of interviews in Act Three concerns the attack of Reginald Denny, a white trucker whom four Black men (nicknamed the LA 4) racially targeted and attacked, leading Denny to suffer life-altering injuries. The media seized on Denny’s story, transforming him into a symbol of white victimhood. Denny’s story nearly overshadowed King’s initial attack, and people use him to justify and exacerbate white, affluent America’s existing fears about Black people.
Act Four: Twilight deals with the aftermath of the riots, presenting a series of interviews that address how the city of Los Angeles ought to move beyond crisis and down a path of healing and progress. Reverend Tom Choi, a minister, speaks of the togetherness he felt with the Black people he encountered when he went to South-Central Los Angeles to help clean up after the riots. The experience reminded him to open himself up to sharing love with others. Paula Weinstein, a movie producer, talks about people from different races and cultures coming together to volunteer to help neighborhoods affected by the riots. However, she ultimately decides that the phenomenon was more a symbolic gesture than an indicator of actual change. Other characters share Weinstein’s cynical attitude. Otis Chandler, former editor of the Los Angeles Times, notes how the city failed to implement long-term changes following the Watts riots and fears the same thing will happen with the 1992 riots. Elaine Brown, former head of the Black Panther Party, laments the unlikelihood of an “unorganized, poorly armed” resistance army to overpower “the power and weaponry / and the arsenal of the United States government and its willingness to / use it.”
Writer and scholar Homi Bhabha and artist Betye Saar then meditate on the idea of twilight, which both characters interpret as a symbol for the uncertain, ambiguous situation Los Angeles finds itself in the aftermath of the riots. However, whereas Homi Bhabha sees this uncertainty as an opportunity to start anew and imagine better, more just institutions and ways of being, Saar sees only “evil” and powerlessness.
Act Five: Justice expands on the question of how Los Angeles should move forward in the wake of the riots. The interview subjects explore the meaning of justice and grapple with the question of whether the Rodney King trials and riots brought about any form of justice and, if so, to whom. Mrs. Young-Soon Han, whose liquor store was destroyed in the riots, feels disillusioned with America. Though she wants to feel happy for the Black people for whom the riots were cathartic, she struggles to overcome the bitterness she feels due to her perception that America denies Korean American people their own justice.
The play closes with an interview with Twilight Bey, an organizer of the gang truce and the play’s namesake. Twilight Bey continues to consider what twilight can stand for. He emphasizes that twilight exists in between darkness and light, comparing darkness to the self and light to the knowledge of the world and other people. Twilight Bey concludes his interview by emphasizing the necessity of bridging the gap between the self and the world in order “to be a full human being,” suggesting that looking beyond one’s own race to begin to understand the experiences of others will be essential as the city moves toward healing its social ills.
