Let Me Down Easy

About

Anna Deveare Smith is both a riveting performer and avid story collector. Since the 1980s, Smith has conducted hard-hitting interviews with hundreds of individuals to re-enact them, verbatim, on stage. Her “documentary-plays” address difficult issues: race, poverty, migration and compassion. Smith wowed audiences with her solo show "Fires In The Mirror," tackling race riots in Brooklyn, New York in 1994. The success of her second piece, "Twilight: Los Angeles," examining the Rodney King riots, led to a performance at the White House. "Let Me Down Easy" is a series of embodied histories about grace in the face of life, death and an increasingly disparate health care system. Smith mimics and morphs into an eclectic mix intimately interviewed characters, ranging from Lance Armstrong to a rodeo cowboy to a mistreated hospital patient; each time, she perfects his or her respective quirks and mannerisms. Performing against a sparse background of mirrors, Smith sounds out, always chillingly, these diverse and honest experiences with mortality and resilience—more often than not, to a standing ovation.