Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, The California Chapter

Playwright, actor, and educator Anna Deavere Smith garnered a 2012 National Humanities Medal from President Obama and a MacArthur Award for her incisive and astounding theatrical investigations – from racial tension with law enforcement (Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992) to the deficiencies in our health care system in Let Me Down Easy. Now she turns her attention to “the school-to-prison pipeline,” which, by pushing children out of the classroom into the criminal justice system, has created a lost generation of youth from poor communities. In act one, Anna performs striking portraits culled from interviews she conducted with nearly 150 individuals in Northern California and elsewhere in the nation, affected by the pipeline’s devastating policies – capturing the dynamics of a rapidly shifting social issue through her trademark performance technique. She will be joined by Bay Area favorite, jazz musician Marcus Shelby. Act two…involves you! Anna invites the audience to engage in dynamic conversations and be active agents of change. With the compelling and inspiring Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education, Anna Deavere Smith believes that we all have the imagination, the wit, and the heart to make a difference.