Anna Deavere Smith is incredible. There’s really no other way of putting it. She’s an actor (West Wing, Madame Secretary), a professor and a playwright. Her newest endeavor, “The Pipeline Project” centers around her play “Notes from the Field” – written with inspiration from hundreds of interviews from people of all walks of life. Her plays are one-woman, documentary style performances where she becomes – and you have to see this part to really understand it – a person she’s met and allows them to tell their story through her. Think Humans of New York or This American Life but in the flesh.
The project started because she really wanted to understand what the world looks like to the people around her – or as she puts it, “to experience everything I’m not. To be woven into this very complex and beautifully diverse fabric we call the United States of America.”
Basically, Anna knows we all just want our friends, our families and ourselves to be happy. But let’s be real, it’s hard to meet people where they are if we’ve never stepped foot in that world. That’s why her project is so rad – it gives us a way to tell the stories we live and live the stories we hear.
Anna inspires all of us to step out of our comfort zone and get to know our neighbors.
