Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright whom you may have seen on shows like “Nurse Jackie,” “ Blackish,” “Madame Secretary,” or “West Wing.”
I haven’t. Missed those. Sorry.
Smith is a gifted performer, but I’ve only seen her, and know her from her less commercial, documentary theatre like “Twilight: Los Angeles,” about the Los Angeles race riots of 1992.
That wasn’t escapist fare.
Neither is her latest, “The Pipeline Project,” a project whose stated goal is “the end of the school to prison pipeline and the effects of public school policies that criminalize misbehavior and that subject students of color and low-income backgrounds disproportionately to exclusionary discipline or criminal prosecution.”
A mouthful. But it happens. We know it. These are the young men and women who don’t make it to higher ed.
Smith asks us by presenting the facts as artfully as she can. And she doesn’t let us off the hook.
