Anna Deavere Smith is a professor, playwright and actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles on “The West Wing” and “Nurse Jackie”. She’s currently speaking and performing at the Aspen Ideas Festival to discuss her projects, “Notes From The Field” and “The Pipeline Project”. They focus on the relationship between education, poverty and how that relates to youth incarceration. She performed on Sunday, and will again Tuesday evening in an event that is open to the public.
“Poor kids are punished more harshly,” Deavere Smith said. “They’re suspended and expelled more often than middle-class kids are. At a certain age, these suspensions certainly predict they’re going to be in certainly the juvenile justice system.”
“Notes From The Field” is a play she performs by herself. It’s based on over 300 interviews she performed with academics, teachers, students and inmates about their experiences. She then performs excerpts from those interviews.
One teacher, Stephanie Williams, makes appearances in the performance.
Deavere Smith said people like Williams should be, “taken on a vacation” because of the work that they do.
