You may know Anna Deavere Smith from her prolific TV work portraying pragmatic, principled characters on shows like “The West Wing,” “Nurse Jackie,” and “Black-ish.” But she’s also one of the premier dramatists of the modern age, creating a distinctive style of one-person theater in which a single actor seamlessly embodies multiple characters.
Her plays draw from interviews with everyday people navigating complex societal issues, from riots (“Fires in the Mirror,” “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992”) to the culture of death and dying (“Let Me Down Easy”) to the school-to-prison pipeline (“Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education”). Highly regarded by critics and audiences alike, her one-of-a-kind plays are incisive, empathetic, and transformational, often exploring pervasive racial tensions in America.
Smith is also a powerhouse professor at New York University, where she teaches interdisciplinary graduate classes at the Tisch School of the Arts. She’s one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, and has educated students about multidisciplinary performance at several renowned universities. In 2006, she published a book on the subject: “Letters to a Young Artist,” which offers straightforward, heartfelt lessons for up-and-coming creators.
Here, Smith (who, full disclosure, was my grad school professor) offers 10 pieces of advice for current and aspiring acting students.
1. Acting isn’t about you.
Smith notes that theater students often focus on their own experience rather than the audience’s. She believes that this tendency to turn inward isn’t because young performers are self-centered, but because the Stanislavsky-based techniques widely taught in the U.S. focus on psychological realism, which encourages actors to look inside themselves to find their creative identity. “I think the first part of the curriculum needs to be that it’s not about you,” she says. “What if this craft is not about self, but about being an observer of the world?”
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2. Empathy comes from observation.
To help students redirect their attention outward, Smith advises drawing inspiration from the people around them. “What if acting—contrary to what Elon Musk said [about empathy being a ‘fundamental weakness’]—is about really focusing on others? Acting is an inquiry; it’s a real investigation of humans.”
3. Define your goals.
If you’re thinking about pursuing a career in acting, Smith believes it’s essential to consider artistry before practicality. “ ‘How can I have a career? How can I do this? How can I do that?’ Those are questions for a career adviser or a life coach; they’re not the questions you should take into the study of theater. The questions should be structured around the world and the humans in it.”
4. Look for art in unexpected places.
When Smith was an MFA student at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, one of her instructors encouraged her to go see the opulent window displays at a downtown department store and to observe labor union gatherings at the city docks. This exercise helped her pay attention to the creativity all around her. “What is so-called ‘art’? Store windows are art, right?” she posits. “You need to be in the world. On the one hand, training can be a monkish, controlled existence, to a certain extent. But on the other hand, you should always be in relationship to the world around you.”
5. Foster a culture of collaboration.
“Theater has to be a community, and everybody has to have a role,” Smith says. In her courses, she assigns community positions to each of her students, both to encourage participation and to emphasize the importance of embracing the actor’s role in society at large. “Everybody has a responsibility for [the success of] our class,” she explains. “It’s not just me; the class belongs to the students. If I’m successful, I talk a lot in the beginning and much less at the end.”
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6. Pay attention to all critiques.
Smith believes that learning the craft isn’t just about listening to the notes that professors give you individually. “Pay equal attention, if not more, to what the teacher is saying to somebody else,” she advises. “Because when you get a sense of how the teacher is really talking, you get a sense of their values.”
7. Get to know your instructors.
Every professor you encounter in drama school has a distinct creative identity and body of work—so it’s vital to consider the methodologies, ideologies, and approaches of each. “Know who you’re studying with,” Smith says. “[For example,] my specialty is emotions and language; take advantage of that.”
8. Cultivate self-awareness.
Smith encourages students to think about how they see their own work. “In ‘Letters to a Young Artist,’ I write that you need to be developing your own sense of whether [your performance] worked or not, which is very hard.” In her classes, she stresses that “the most important thing is to get rid of [asking yourself,] ‘Was it good?’ You have to stop listening for that. That’s how we train dogs: ‘Good girl.’ ‘Good boy.’ And you’re not a dog, right? It’s a more intellectual prospect than that. You’ve got to be able to take it in and build that system [of self-awareness] over time to know what lands and what doesn’t.”
9. Know your body.
Acting begins with maintaining your physical well-being. “Take care of yourself,” Smith advises. “Everybody has a different kind of body, and everybody’s body does different things, right? There are really talented people who take drugs and drink alcohol and don’t go to sleep at night. Know what your body can withstand rather than being dogmatic about it.”
10. Inspiration can come from anywhere.
When I ask Smith what works have inspired her to maintain and expand her commitment to the craft, her response is wide-ranging: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Mike Wallace’s 1959 interview with pioneering Black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Jack Whitten’s abstract 2014 painting “Atopolis.” For her, the latter is emblematic of an actor’s relationship with the world. “ ‘Atopolis’ is really about the idea that, in the end, you have to work very hard to find a sense of belonging; it’s not given to you.”
Must-Reads by Smith
- “Fires in the Mirror”
This one-woman show digs into the 1991 riots that rocked Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood following the accidental death of a Black child and the subsequent murder of an Orthodox Jewish student. The play, which proved to be Smith’s breakout work, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. - “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992”
Smith interviewed more than 200 individuals to compile this incisive exploration of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. To create a full picture of the events, she spoke to a wide variety of Angelenos, including Rodney King’s aunt, a former police chief, and a disabled Korean man. - “Let Me Down Easy”
Smith widened her lens for this deep dive into the way American society approaches death and dying. To tackle such a complex subject, Smith spoke to doctors, professional athletes, activists, religious leaders, and everyday people across the nation.
This story originally appeared in the Apr. 10 issue of Backstage Magazine.
