HONOREES

 

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Award-Winning Actress and Playwright

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH is an actress, playwright and teacher who has been recognized for creating a new form of theatre. She received the National Humanities Medal, presented to her by President Obama in 2013. She was the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow for Theatre Arts (for the development of Notes From the Field). She is a MacArthur Fellow and received The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. She is the recipient of two Tony nominations and two Obie Awards. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her play Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. 

She has created over 18 one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews, most of which deal with social issues. Fires in the Mirror premiered at The Public Theater. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the Los Angeles race riots of 1992, was performed around the country and on Broadway. Let Me Down Easy focused on health care in the U.S.  Her new endeavor is The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project, which seeks to use theater and film to raise awareness about the forces that cause some impoverished children to leave school and head towards cycles of incarceration.  Her current play, Notes From the Field, is a part of that project.

 In popular culture she has been seen in Nurse Jackie, Black-ish, The West Wing, The American President, Rachel Getting Married and Philadelphia. Books include Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines.

She has a number of honorary degrees including those from Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Juilliard and Union Theological Seminary, and The Radcliffe Medal. She is a recipient of the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Dean’s Medal. She sits on the boards of trustees for the American Museum of National History, the Aspen Institute, The Playwrights Realm, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is University Professor in the department of Art & Public Policy at New York University and is affiliated with the School of Law. She also directs the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University.

In 1992 and 1993, Mr. Beshar served as the Special Assistant to Ambassador Cyrus Vance in connection with the United Nations' peace negotiations in the former Yugoslavia. Mr. Beshar is the recipient of the Business Leadership Award from the Citizens Union of New York, the Burton Award for Leadership in the Law, and the Law and Society Award from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. In 2008, Mr. Beshar was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow by the Partnership for the City of New York. Mr. Beshar is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Beshar graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. Following law school, Mr. Beshar clerked for Judge Vincent Broderick of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.