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The Arts Intel Report

SigSpace Summit Series: Anna Deavere Smith

September 14, 2020
480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036, United States

“And we marched / and we started / ‘No Justice No Peace.’” This is the voice of a community activist—one of many voices in Anna Deavere Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992—as she recalls the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean grocery clerk. Smith’s one-woman show details what followed the slaying of Harlins and the brutal beating of Rodney King, and is based on some 300 people she interviewed. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, Smith revisits the play and its themes through conversation with Twilight Bey, the real-life activist for whom the play is named, Susan K. Lee, Chicago’s Deputy Mayor of Public Safety, and Héctor Tobar, the original production’s dramaturg. Sitting at the nexus of arts and politics, the discussion will be streamed through Zoom, and hosted by the Signature Theatre, whose spring production of Twilight was postponed due to the coronavirus. —C.J.F.