Anna Deavere Smith

thumb|Anna Deavere Smith in 2009 Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950) is an American actress, playwright, and professor. Quotes My life's work has been to go around America with a tape recorder trying to become America word for word. And I've met a lot of people who I disagree with. I've met a lot of people who you would think I would disagree with. But I have to say it's enriched my sense of being an American to reach out to people who are very, very different from me… On connecting with people with opposing viewpoints in “Anna Deavere Smith Brings One-Woman Play 'Notes From The Field' To HBO” in NPR (2018 Mar 4) I do believe that character is a process, that truth is a process, and I am not interested in winning and losing… On character building in “Wearing the Words: An Interview with Anna Deavere Smith” in the Buddhist Review (Fall 1994) …White racism is about people who don’t feel so bad about fixed things. But white racism is a fixed thing, and it is perpetuated because of fixedness. Anything that we can do that causes people to desire movement more than fixedness is going to disrupt racism… On racism and the concept of fixedness in “Wearing the Words: An Interview with Anna Deavere Smith” in the Buddhist Review (Fall 1994) The words are verbatim. The words are exactly what the people said. When I was a girl, my grandfather said, “If you say a word often enough, it becomes you,” and that’s really my technique. I really believe that if I learn exactly what somebody said, that I will find myself, as an actor, in a similar state of mind as them. I’ll never know what they’re really thinking, but I’ll have some of their feelings… On trying to capture the words of her interviewees to produce an accurate play in “The Power of Words: A Conversation with Anna Deavere Smith” in LA Screenwriter External links Category:African Americans Category:Playwrights from the United States Category:Actresses from Baltimore Category:Educators from the United States Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Carnegie Mellon University faculty Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Women born in the 1950s