Anna Deavere Smith is the theatrical equivalent of Studs Terkel: a master at interviewing people and turning the text into a book (or non-book, as some critics have said). In Smith’s case, of course, she takes the text and gives voice to it, like the skilled actress she is.
Following on the heels of such one-woman, multi-character plays as Fires in the Mirror (responses to the 1991 Crown Heights riots) and Twilight: Los Angeles (responses to the Rodney King riots), Smith has now put together another example of her singular way of dealing with social and racial issues: Never Givin’ Up, an exploration of civil rights in our time.
Backed by violinist Robert McDuffie and pianist Anne Epperson, Smith builds her show around Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Written in 1963 while he was locked up for leading an anti-segregation demonstration, the letter is a stirring and profound manifesto, a cry for freedom and brotherhood that matches Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation.”
Scribbled on sheets of newspaper, the speech was never delivered in public by King, but fortunately, the text survived his incarceration and has become part of our history. Smith wisely does not try to imitate King’s voice and mannerisms, just reads his speech directly, putting her own emotions into his words.
King is a hard act to follow, but Smith’s research (and in some cases personal interviews) have turned up some remarkable gems. Linda Wayman, principal of a north Philadelphia high school, delivers a blistering speech on the way our still-segregated schools fail Black and Latino youth (the “school-to-prison pipeline,” is how she sums up their education). Rudy Salas, an L.A. Chicano artist, recalls the prejudice and hatred he encountered as a rebellious youth. Charlayne Hunter Gault talks about what it was like to be the first black kid to integrate the University of Georgia in 1961, with fellow students hurling rocks at her dorm window.
Smith imitates these and other voices in astonishingly skillful and vivid fashion. Her word portraits become a mosaic of America’s ongoing problems with race. When modern-day police-chief of Birmingham goes before the African-American community and apologizes for the brutal way it had been treated by his department in the old days, his plea for forgiveness helps Never Givin’ Up end on a note of grace and hope.
