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Health Takes Center Stage
Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy extended
Anna Deavere Smith is known for performing what insiders call “documentary theater.” Compiling extraordinary first-person accounts, she interweaves various viewpoints into cogent, often searing shows. Always focused on current events, the provocative award-winning actress is back. This time, she’s at Second Stage with Let Me Down Easy, exploring the world of health care from both the patient and practitioner perspective.
The play has garnered such acclaim its run has been extended through January 3. No wonder, since the subject is ultra-timely. As health-care reform navigates treacherous political waters, Smith sees Let Me as a call to arms.
“I hope the audience leaves the theater thinking about what we all need to do to enhance our spiritual and physical wellness,” she says. “They can enact that in the way they vote, organize their workplaces, their families, their homes, and their communities.”
Smith channels a range of subjects in the current production — from Lance Armstrong to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. The project, eight years in the making, meant interviewing hundreds of subjects. Smith spoke with doctors and patients at cancer centers, Yale and Stanford’s medical schools, victims of Hurricane Katrina and health-care providers abroad.
“The piece not only looks at the human body as both resilient and vulnerable,” she told The New York Times, “but also health care as a practical part of that.”
Heralded for Fires in the Mirror, which addressed the 1991 Crown Heights riots, and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, a serious look at the LA riots that destroyed Korean businesses, Smith’s plays have been lauded for their insight and sensitivity. Her one-woman shows, which discuss our multifaceted national identity, have garnered Drama Desk and Obie awards. She has also received a prestigious MacArthur fellowship.
Let Me Down Easy, much like her previous productions, combines journalistic-style interviews with singular artistic interpretation. The New York Times called her “the ultimate impressionist, she does people’s souls.”
For more info:
Second Stage Theatre
www.2st.com