Anna Deavere Smith
2024–2025 Artist in Residence
Documentary Theater, Performance
As the 2024–2025 CFA Artist in Residence, Anna Deavere Smith Hon. ’97 continued to explore how performance can change the stories that shape collective history, deepening our capacity to listen to ourselves and to each other. Her residency was structured around three points of campus engagement, beginning with a staged reading and discussion of her latest play.
About Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an award-winning playwright, actor, and University Professor at New York University, known for her documentary-style theater created from interviews that illuminate urgent social issues. Since 2014, her work has focused on youth impacted by structural racism and incarceration, and her current project, This Ghost of Slavery—drawing on historical texts and interviews with a Chicago nonprofit—traces the legacy of slavery through to today’s school-to-prison pipeline. Smith has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and two Tonys, and has received the National Humanities Medal, the Jefferson Lectureship, and numerous honorary doctorates. Her acclaimed works include Twilight: Los Angeles, and her screen credits span The West Wing, Inventing Anna, and Philadelphia.
