Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, and author credited with creating a new form of theater. Her plays, using the methodology for that form, focus on contemporary issues, are composed of interview excerpts, and represent multiple points of view. These plays, and films based on them, include Fires in the Mirror; Twilight: Los Angeles; Let Me Down Easy; and Notes from the Field. Her play This Ghost of Slavery, written for The Atlantic, is one of only two plays published in the magazine’s history. Her acting for popular culture media includes The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, Black-ish, Philadelphia, The American President, Rachel Getting Married, For the People, Inventing Anna, and The Boroughs. The movie Pendulum is forthcoming. She was the George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford in 2023 and is currently a University Professor at New York University. 

In 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal. Additional honors include a 1996 MacArthur Fellowship, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University School of Medicine, Obie Awards, and two Tony nominations. Fires in the Mirror was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She served on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities under President Biden.

Photo: Kwaku Alston/HBO

Artwork shown during Anna Deavere Smith’s performance: 

Jack Whitten, Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant, 2014. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

© 2026 Jack Whitten Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.