Political Solo Performances by Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith is an African American playwright, performer and an academician who has created a unique technique in creating her plays. This article examines her journalistic technique of interviewing people and building a performance text out of interviews. Smith uses solo performance as a medium to explore issues of race, identity and gender. Her plays, as in “Fires in the Mirror”, reveal contradictory notions of individuals on such matters in order to show that identity is not singular but is multi-layered and more complex than we think. This article also discusses her method of acting as it is closely related to her ideas on identity and race. Overall, the article demonstrates the ways Anna Deavere Smith challenges the principles of traditional political theatre and how she creates a more fluid, intricate and dynamic way of understanding identity and political performance.