Wiley Hausam, Director
Daniel Gurskis, Dean, College of the Arts
PEAK Performances Presents
AN AFTERNOON WITH
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Travels with an African-American Girl Across Decades and Territories
SUN., SEPTEMBER 10, 2023
ALEXANDER KASSER THEATER
About the Artist
Anna Deavere Smith is a writer and actress. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Her plays, sometimes called “docudramas,” focus on contemporary issues from multiple points of view and are composed from excerpts of hundreds of interviews. Plays, and films based on them, include Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, both of which dealt with volatile race events in the 1990s; Let Me Down Easy, about the US healthcare system; and Notes from the Field, which focused on the school-to-prison pipeline. Her work as an actress on television includes Inventing Anna, The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, and Black-ish. Mainstream movies include Philadelphia, The American President, Rachel Getting Married, and Here Today.
President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. She was the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, several Obie awards, two Drama Desk awards, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, and the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University School of Medicine. She was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for two Tony Awards. She is a university professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has several honorary doctorate degrees including those from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Spelman College, Prairie View University, Juilliard, and Oxford.
An Invitation to Our Community
We believe that the live performing arts contribute to the building of healthier communities.
We would like to invite you to become a member of our community in any way that’s comfortable for you.
Our community is diverse and inclusive: you’ll find interesting folks from surrounding towns, Montclair State University students, faculty and staff, and artists and thinkers from the world at large.
If this sounds interesting to you and you’d like more information, please reach out to me.
I’ll be back in touch. Thank you so much for your interest in being together in a physical space to experience the live performing arts!
Sincerely,
Wiley Hausam
Director, PEAK Performances
Email: hausamw@montclair.edu
Staff Credits
PEAK Performances
Wiley Hausam | Director
Taliyah Bethea | Marketing Assistant
Susan Case | Program Book Coordinator
Chrissy D’Aleo Fels | Community Liaison Manager
Patrick Flood | Graphic Designer, Art Director
Martin Halo | Website Development
Michael Landes | Membership Coordinator
Camille Spaccavento | Marketing and Media Director
Michael Steele | Company Manager
Blake Zidell Associates | Media Representative
College of the Arts
Performance Operations
Andy Dickerson | Production Manager
Colin van Horn | Technical Director
Kevin Johnson | Sr. Production Engineer
Jason Flamos | Lighting Supervisor
Laurel Brolly | Business Manager
Robert Hermida | Audience Services Director
Jeff Lambert Wingfield | Box Office Manager
Reyna Cortes, Shantel Maysonett, Susanne Oyedeji, Eliezer Ramirez | Box Office Leads
William Collins | House Manager
College of the Arts
Daniel Gurskis | Dean
Ronald L. Sharps | Associate Dean
Christine Lemesianou | Associate Dean
Zacrah S. Battle | College Administrator
Christopher Kaczmarek | Chairperson, Department of Art and Design
Anthony Mazzocchi | Director, John J. Cali School of Music
Keith Strudler | Director, School of Communication and Media
Kathleen Kelley | Chairperson, Department of Theatre and Dance
Wiley Hausam | Director, Arts + Cultural Programming
Hillery Makatura | Director, Performance Operations
Patricia Piroh | Director, Broadcast and Media Operations
Megan C. Austin | Director, University Galleries
We respectfully acknowledge that Montclair State University occupies land in Lenapehoking, the traditional and expropriated territory of the Lenape. As a state institution, we recognize and support the sovereignty of New Jersey’s three state-recognized tribes: the Ramapough Lenape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, and Powhatan Renape nations. We recognize the sovereign nations of the Lenape diaspora elsewhere in North America, as well as other Indigenous individuals and communities now residing in New Jersey. By offering this land acknowledgement, we commit to addressing the historical legacies of Indigenous dispossession and dismantling practices of erasure that persist today. We recognize the resilience and persistence of contemporary Indigenous communities and their role in educating all of us about justice, equity, and the stewardship of the land throughout the generations.
Programs in this season were made possible, in part, by the Alexander Kasser Theater Endowment Fund, PEAK Patrons, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
PEAK Performances develops, presents, and produces a broad range of world-class dance, film, master classes, music, opera and music theater, talks, and theater in the Alexander Kasser Theater on the campus of Montclair State University for students, faculty, staff, and the general public. We are building community through live performance. PEAK Performances is a program of the university’s Arts + Cultural Programming Department.