Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith is credited with having created a new form of theater. Her plays, which focus on contemporary issues from multiple points of view, are composed of interview excerpts.  President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. She’s the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, several Obie awards, and the George Polk Career Award in Journalism.  She was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for two Tony Awards. Plays and films based on them include Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, Let Me Down Easy, and Notes from the Field.  Television and film acting includes: Inventing Anna, The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, Black-ish. Philadelphia, The American President, and Rachel Getting Married,  She’s a professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Last year she was Eastman Professor at Oxford. She has several honorary doctorate degrees including those from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Spelman College and Juilliard and Oxford.