One Woman, Many Issues

Anna Deavere Smith has been known to say that if she were a white man, she would not be able to do the work that she does.

Smith is an actor, writer, political commentator and artistic innovator who will share her work at Duke Friday at "An Evening with Anna Deavere Smith" in Page Auditorium.

Smith creates one-woman shows in response to political, often racially charged events. Two of her most renowned works are Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities, which explores the 1991 conflict between African-Americans and Jews in Brooklyn, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the notorious L.A. "riots."

She also comments on America in a more general way with House Arrest: First Edition, which looks at the way America has defined itself through and against its presidents.

Because she is a solo artist, Smith takes on all characters in her pieces herself, often playing roles outside her own gender and race, and switches from, ay, a Hasidic Jew to Al Sharpton within seconds. In videos of her work, she does this with the aid of costumes, but when she excerpts them live, she fluidly indicates a switch with only her posture and the sound of her voice.

Also a writer for Newsweek and a Stanford University professor, Smith infuses her work with political relevancy that remains somehow neutral, and encourages the audience to transcend a predilection to judge her by her own gender and race. Tomorrow night at Page, she'll see if Duke students are up to the challenge.

Anna Deavere Smith and her entourage of, well, herself, takes the stage of Page Auditorium tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Student tickets are $12 and general tickets are $20.