Notes from the Field

Notes from the Field, is a play created, written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith (worth reading her Wiki page) at Second Stage Theater.  Run do not walk to get tickets.  The piece (which is what this is) is a culmination of interviews that she did over many years diving directly into race, education and the criminal justice system.

Smith plays 19 characters in all over the course of the play.  She is Sherrilyn Ifill, the President of the NAACP, she is Kevin Moore, the videographer of the Freddie Gray beating, she is Allen Bullock a protestor from Baltimore, she is Jamal Bryant the pastor who spoke at the funeral of Freddie Gray, she is Michael Tubbs the mayoral candidate for Stockton, CA, she is Taos Proctor former inmate of the Yurok Tribal Reservation, she is Tony Eady Student Concerns Specialist in North Charleston High School, she is Leticia De Santiago parent in Stockton, CA, she is Linda Wayman Principal of the Strawberry Mansion High School in Philadelphia, she is Amanda Ripley Senior at the Emerson Collective & Journalist, she is Niya Kenny Spring Valley High School Studnet in Columbia SC, she is Denise Dodson Inmate in the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, she is Dr. Victor Carrion Psychiatrist and Director of Stanford Early Stress Research Program, she is Stephanie Williams Emotional Support Teacher in Philadelphia, she is Bree Newson Artist and Activist who climbed the flag pole in South Carolina to take down the Confederate flag after the church murders, she is Congressman John Lewis US Representative in Washington DC who walked with Martin Luther King.

Smith is amazing.  To be able to articulate everyone of these characters not only through words but through her body and demeanor.  She makes a powerful statement about the state of our country.