Anna Deavere Smith Residency

Each year, the Center for the Arts partners with visiting artists who are at critical and transformative junctures in their practice. While providing time and space, our residency is distinguished by the opportunity for artists to integrate into campus life, working closely with students and faculty to incubate new work and develop a course of study for all involved that exceeds the traditional classroom.

Known for her interview-based documentary theater, Anna Deavere Smith creates performances out of a tapestry of conversations that elevate pressing contemporary issues. Since 2014, she has focused on young people who fall outside of the “good family,” exploring the relations of structural racism, mass incarceration, healthcare, and the educational system. In her current project, Smith extends her method across time, delving into an archive of primary documents on the history of the United States. This Ghost of Slavery (originally published in The Atlantic, December 2023) features verbatim language from contemporary interviews (specifically with members of a Chicago-based non-profit focused on reducing gun violence) and historical research on “apprenticeship laws,” bridging Smith’s work on the school-to-prison pipeline to the long legacy of slavery. As the 2024– 2025 CFA Artist in Residence, Smith will continue exploring how performance can change the stories that shape collective history, deepening our capacity to listen to ourselves and to each other. Her residency will be structured around three points of campus engagement, beginning with a staged reading and discussion of her latest play.

Anna Deavere Smith is a University Professor at New York University. President Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal (2012), and she was named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities (2015). She has received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2013), the Ridenhour Courage Prize, and the George Polk Career Award in Journalism (both 2017). Smith has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and for two Tony Awards. Smith has created over fifteen one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews, including the widely celebrated Twilight: Los Angeles (1992). She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Oxford, Spelman College, Yale University, Harvard University, and the Juilliard School (among others). Her television credits include Black-ish, For the People, Nurse Jackie, Inventing Anna, and The West Wing; and her films include The American President, Philadelphia, and Rachel Getting Married.