Look in the Mirror: ‘Notes From The Field’

Through time and the passing of civilizations, the gifted storyteller makes both literature and legend, and makes us see ourselves in new and vivid ways. The soothsayers of ancient campfires paced the DNA of the bloggers of 2016.

In her new show at Second Stage in Manhattan, storyteller Anna Deavere Smith tackles the biggest rogue elephant in the wild room of the American scene. The subject is race and politics, and she nails it.

We the audience see our own times, our own conflicts, and our own tragedies in new detail. The images that flare briefly in the mad rush of the news cycle are rendered here anew, with all their contradictions and humanity intact.

Ms. Smith does not preach or accuse. She reveals, so that the kaleidoscope of mass media disappears, and we are left in the presence of real people living in and with the festering discords of our society.

We all saw the tape of Freddie Gray being loaded into the police van. But do we know who shot the video? Or who eulogized Mr. Gray? We all saw the schoolgirl overturned in her desk by a security guard. But did we hear from the teacher or the other kids in the class?

Ms. Smith has searched out these people, and others, interviewed them, and, using their words, portrays them so that we know in context what they experienced, what they thought, wished, regretted, and still feel. The work is amplified by director Leonard Foglia and a top-notch design team: Riccardo Hernandez (sets), Ann Hould-Ward (costumes), Howell Binkley (lighting), Elaine McCarthy (projections), and Leon Rothenberg (sound). Composer Marcus Shelby adds a graceful depth to the proceedings with his touch at the stand-up bass.

But it is the breadth of approach that endows “Notes From The Field” with such transcendent power. Ms. Smith enacts the parts of a score of individuals, convincingly, from executives to convicts, so that we see a comprehensive living canvas of the strife and imbalance of today, and then she reaches back to the early days of the civil rights movement, this to a stunning effect.

Ms. Smith portrays a reunion between U.S. Congressman John Lewis and a particular member of the Ku Klux Klan. If you are of a certain age, you cannot forget the bloody conflicts over integration in the Deep South of the early 1960s. Mr. Lewis was there. The Klan was also there.

And now, no matter your age, you may well experience a catharsis of reconciliation so profound and authentic as to draw tears. You will feel how wrong America was, and how right it can be. Ms. Smith takes us to the dark side, to the human toll of the systemic failures of our society, but then, she also shares with us the restorative powers of conscience – and love.

Bravo to Second Stage for producing this show. It is epic and intimate, our moment in history revealed fully – the storyteller with her mirror showing us ourselves as never before.

“Notes From The Field” runs through Dec. 11 at Second Stage Theatre, 305 W. 43rd St. For tickets, call 212-246-4422.