Playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith’s Off-Broadway production Notes From the Field highlights 19 compelling portraits inspired by her new social justice initiative, The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project. The two-act play focuses on the correlation of race, education, poverty, mass incarceration, and how systemic racism disproportionately impacts and affects people of color.
A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Smith has created more than 18 one-person shows and is widely known for creating her brand of documentary theater. Notes From the Field is a follow-up to her critically-acclaimed productions of Let Me Down Easy (2009), Twilight: Los Angeles (1992) and Fires in the Mirror (1991). Smith’s journey to Notes From the Field began with the discovery of the “school-to-prison pipeline” theory which led her to further discussions with social justice experts in New York. Meanwhile, findings and statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education showed how poor African Americans, Native Americans and brown children were suspended and expelled from school more frequently than their middle-class white counterparts. During the pre-production process, Smith traveled across the country and conducted more than 250 interviews with teachers, principals, students, government officials, advocates, activists, inmates, family members and members of the community on the subjects of gun violence, aggressive policing, racial profiling, and mental health issues.
Smith’s brilliant storytelling and firsthand accounts tackle the issues of why and how America has the highest prison rate in the world. The stellar design team for Notes From The Field—including Riccardo Hernandez (scenic design), Elaine McCarthy (video and projection), and Howell Binkley (lighting)—creates a transitional and a contrasting environment for each portrait. Composer and jazzman Marcus Shelby accompanies Smith on the upright bass during pivotal scenes in the production, serving as a witness and observer. Shelby’s presence uniquely adds to the visual backdrop.
From the highly-publicized news stories of the death of Freddie Gray in Smith’s hometown of Baltimore to the less-publicized case of Native American Taos Proctor, a Yurok fisherman and former inmate, who was facing a life sentence for drugs on a third-strike conviction, Notes From the Field is a riveting collection of narratives on social injustices across our nation. With each story seamlessly woven into the next, the varied first-person accounts include those of social activist and filmmaker Bree Newsome, who was brought up on civil disobedience charges for the removal of the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina State House grounds. Newsome’s actions followed her outrage of the state government refusal to lower the flag following the Charleston Massacre, which nine people were gunned down during Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Smith’s recreation of the “The Shakara Story” of a then-18-year-old Niya Kenny, the second student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina who was also arrested after Ben Fields, a white resource school officer, arrested her for standing up for her 16-year-old classmate Shakara, who was violently and viciously dragged and body slammed by Fields and later arrested. Smith’s portrayals also included an intimate portrait of Denise Dobson, a maximum-security prisoner at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, who was charged with conspiracy and attempted murder and is now a model inmate. Dobson is a student at the Goucher Prison Education Partnerships, a progressive program with Goucher College in Maryland.
The collection of monologues of Notes From the Field delivers many compelling moments, from the opening portrayal of Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education, to civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis. One of the most impassioned portraits from Notes From the Field was that of Baltimore’s Pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant during the homegoing services of Freddie Gray. Smith captured the spirited homily with inflections of a black Southern preacher as she delivered his powerful words: “This is not the time for us as a people to be sitting on the corner drinking malt liquor. This is not the time for us to be playing the lottery or to be at the Horseshoe Casino. This is not the time for us to be walking around with our pants hanging down pass our behind. This is not the time for no respect for our legacy or our history. Get up, you are not Lil Wayne, you are not Lil Boosie, you are in the mantle and legacy of Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Mitchell, Sr., and Parren Mitchell and Kweisi Mfume. Get your black self up and change this city.”
Directed by Leonard Foglia, this masterfully crafted, two-hour production is a timely and insightful look at the racial disparities of our criminal justice system. Along with film director Ava DuVernay’s recent documentary 13th on the alarming mass incarceration rate in America, Smith’s production also sheds light on the growing and unexamined “school-to-prison pipeline,” and the revelation that some children are exposed to this insidious and social injustice as early as 5 years old. The show is highly recommended for parents, as this is an increasingly troubling national problem and America’s “New Civil Rights Movement” of the 21st century.
Notes From the Field runs through December 11th at the Second Stage Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY. For information and tickets, please visit: http://2st.com/shows/current-production/notes-from-the-field. For more information on The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project, please visit www.annadeaveresmith.org.
Gwendolyn Quinn is an award-winning media strategist with a career spanning over 25 years. Her columns, “Inside Broadway,” “The Living Legends Series,” and “My Person of the Week” are published with EURWEB.com. Quinn is also a contributor to Souls Revealed and Handle Your Entertainment Business. She is the curator of The Living Legends Foundation’s “The State of Black Music and Beyond” essay series published by the Huffington Post.
