2015

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH

Writer/Actor

THE BROAD STAGE

Performing at The Broad Stage, I am always struck by the audience. Los Angeles has some of my favorite audiences. It’s a city of seekers. The Broad Stage welcomes those seeking not just theater but community, which is so important in a sprawling city like L.A.

When we staged my play Never Givin’ Up (2015), which includes a reading of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), The Broad Stage arranged for several audiences of L.A. high school students. These kids were just electrifying, and their grasp of the nuances was astonishing. A young man stood up and said, “It’s one thing to read these words, but to hear them is much more powerful.” When you stand up and put breath into a text, in front of a room full of strangers, a lot of human energy is transmitted back and forth. There’s an intimacy to that exchange that creates a special bond between the performer and audience.

Thanks to The Broad Center, another grantee of The Broad Foundation, I had the chance to perform an early version of my most recent work, Notes From the Field, in front of a group of educators from across the country. This was instrumental in the development of the play, which centers on the harsh disciplinary policies affecting students of color that creates a school-to-prison pipeline. The opportunity to expose the work to audiences who aren’t just “theater people” was a marvelous way to get some feedback and to build the courage to proceed with the project. It’s not the first time I’ve been grateful for the Broads’ convening power; they were also critical in funding Let Me Down Easy (2008–10), another work about a pressing social topic—access to healthcare—that I performed at The Broad Stage.

The title of Never Givin’ Up comes from a line by Congressman John Lewis, whose words I also perform in the play: “Never lose faith; never give up.” Bringing those words to life onstage felt like a revelation to me, but I now consider them a mantra. Before developing Never Givin’ Up, I didn’t fully appreciate how wholly committed Dr. King was to love. That commitment was revolutionary, and yet it also served as a kind of armor. There are some leaders who make love a part of their arsenal, but we tend to think about love as the “soft stuff.” “Letter from Birmingham Jail” shows it doesn’t have to be the “soft stuff” if you get enough people behind it. Love can be radical.