Performing Race: Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror

Performing Race: Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror JANELLE REINELT Note: This essay, for the perfonnance analysis working group of the FIRT/lFfR conference (1995), focused on the video of Fires in rhe Mirror, which is a produced-fortelevision version of Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman live performance. I have also seen the performance live, and refer to that occasion and other instances of live performances in this essay. Since 1992, Anna Deavere Smith has come to public prominence in the United States as a result of two shows she has conceived and performed about events of extreme national importance involving issues of race. One event took place on the east coast, the other on the west coast, and her first performances of the respective plays opened in the geographic location of these events within a year of their origin. Thus, Smith's work has contributed to a local as well as a national dialogue and reflection on race relations in the troubled present.' Beyond the sociopolitical thematics of her work, Smith has been incorporated into public discourses on race because her dramaturgical techniques have aligned her with other types of public discourses such as oral histories, documentary reponage, television talk shows, and network news broadcasts. Smith constructs her plays from interviews with persons directly or indirectly involved in the historical events in question and delivers, verbatim, their words and the essence of their physical beings in characterizations which rail somewhere between caricature, Brechtian epic gestus, and mimicry. This imbrication in the cultural codes of news and history has magnified the authority of Smith's work beyond representation toward an always elusive horizon of ''Truth,'' and has constructed her as a privileged voice who may speak for others across race, class, and gender boundaries. As a solo performer, Smith also invokes discourses of performance theory and vinuosity, both of which have shaped her reception by academic and Modem Drama, 39 (r996) 609 610 JANELLE REINElT popular critics. For academics, she is most often studied for her innovative practices of acting and playwriting. For the popular press, her many talents and wide-ranging flexibility as a performer have led to her construction as celebrity.' These theatrical discussions, however, are inevitably tied up with the claims of authority and historical truth which I wish to examine here. FIRES IN THE MIRROR; CROWN HEIGHTS , BR OO KLY N AND OTHER IDEN TI T IES The Crown Heights section of Brooklyn is inhabited by two primary communities , African-American and the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Jews. Both of these groups have suffered historic discrimination; they have also experienced inter-group tensions, misunderstanding and alienation in Crown Heights for over twenty years. In August of 1991, racial violence exploded in the wake of the death of Guyanese-American Gavin Cato, aged seven, and the injury of his cousin Angela. A car traveling in the cavalcade of Grand Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, driven by Yosef Lifsh, ran a red light, went out of control, and hit the two children. Three hours later, a group of black youth attacked Yankel Rosenbaum, a twenty-nine year old Hasidic student, visiting from Australia. He died of stab wounds. Lemrik Nelson, Jr., a sixteen year old TrinidadianAmerican , was arrested. Four nights of serious rioting followed. Throughout 1991 and into 1992 these incidents continued to divide Crown Heights and to command national newspaper headlines. Lemrick Nelson, Jr. was acquitted of second-degree murder charges; Yosef Lifsh was not indicted for the death of Gavin Cato. Anna Deavere Smith's interviews in Crown Heights were conducted over approximately eight days in the fall of 1991.3 The published version of her script features twenty-nine vignettes constructed primarily from tapes of the interviews. Smith has said that she "went to various people in the mayor's office and asked them for ideas for people to interview. People lead to more people" (46). These interviews were combined with others of well-known intellectuals and artists such Angela Davis, Ntozake Shange, and George C. Wolfe. Her performances have not always included all twenty-nine, and the order of characters has varied. Smith learned about interviewing and embodying people by experimenting with various...