Fires In The Mirror Pdf Document

Wigs have long been a "big issue" for her, in part because she feels like they are "fake" and she is "kind of fooling the world" when she wears one. Stage Manager - Emily Vial. Smith learned about interviewing and embodying people by experimenting with various... Therefore, in addition to referring to a tool like a telescope that allows outside observers to view the racial violence of 1991, the title Fires in the Mirror suggests that the characters of the play, and possibly the audience as well, view themselves and their identities as a fire that is reflected, and possibly distorted, in a mirror.

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Fires In The Mirror Play Summary

Sherman is the director of the mayor of New York's "Increase the Peace Corps, " a youth organization promoting nonviolence. There are a total of 29 monologues in Fires in the Mirror and each one focuses on a character's opinion and point of view of the events and issues surrounding the crisis. She was awarded a prestigious "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1996, and in 1998, in association with the Ford Foundation, she founded the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard (now at New York University) to address socially and politically conscious art. Al Sharpton materializes to claim that he copied his own coiffure from James Brown ("the father I never had"), while a Lubavitcher woman named Rikvah Siegel tells of the five wigs she must wear as a woman among Hasids. Sun, April 25 @ 3pm. The characters consistently provide their perspectives on whether racial harmony is possible in the United States, and many discuss how to go about achieving this goal. Mexican Standoff – The Reverend Canon Doctor Heron Sam says that he feels the Jewish community was unconcerned with the killing of Cato. City Theatre, Pittsburgh. Rayner focuses on Smith's methodology in Fires in the Mirror and includes a profile of the artist. In its first scene "The Desert, " Ntozake Shange discusses identity in terms of feeling a part of, yet separate from, one's surroundings. Three hours later, a group of black youth attacked Yankel Rosenbaum, a twenty-nine year old Hasidic student, visiting from Australia. Following the deaths of a Black American boy and a young Orthodox Jewish scholar in the summer of 1991, underlying racial tensions in the nestled community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn erupted into civil outbreak.

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3376, April 1993, pp. The whole team works together to create onstage a believable, if temporary, social world. This study guide contains the following sections: This detailed literature summary also contains Bibliography on Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith. From the beginning of the play to about the end of it, there seem to be many differences present, both between the communities and what they talk about. Smith is a historian, in the sense that her goal is to gather a multiplicity of perspectives in order to focus on the truth of the past.

Fires In The Mirror

Show full disclaimer. A physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aaron Bernstein is a man in his fifties who wears a shirt with a pen guard. Her text was not a preexisting literary drama but other human beings. Are we to take Anna Deavere Smith's productions on their referential vector, as referring to racial tension in Crown Heights and South Central, or solipsistically as instances of the performance of identity and selfhood? He says, "I think you know/the Eskimos have seventy words for snow/We probably have seventy different kinds of bias/prejudice, racism, and/discrimination. " How would you describe the general perspective of each publication that you view? Fires In The Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn And Other Identities Fires In The Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn And Other Identities. In the preface to Mo's scene, Smith writes, "Mo's everyday speech was as theatrical as Latifah's performance speech, " referring to the famous rap artist and actor Queen Latifah. This is a dangerous process, a form of shamanism. He died of stab wounds.

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He feels that they get no justice in their community, which helps show why the community struck out so violently after the boy died. Rich reviews Fires in the Mirror and Ron Vawter's Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, arguing that both shows are adept at revealing the racial tensions in the United States in the early 1990s. But in so doing, she does not destroy the others or parody them. How does it compare it to the perspectives of some of the characters in Smith's play? Providing an analysis of the television production of Smith's play, Reinelt discusses Smith's performance and dramaturgical technique as well as the play's commentary on race relations. She does not "act" the people you see and listen to in Fires in the Mirror. How do you think your view of the events would be different if you had not seen Smith's play, but had only encountered the situation in the media? Acknowledging the diverse and multifarious causes behind the anger and violence in Crown Heights, Smith highlights the views of black and Lubavitcher leaders and spokespeople as well as anonymous members of each group. In "Rain, " Reverend Al Sharpton discusses why he went to Israel to pursue legal action against the driver who killed Gavin Cato. She captures the essence of the characters she interviews, distilling their thoughts into a brief scene that provides a separate and coherent perspective on a particular situation or idea. Close, wearing a variety of shimmering gowns for the occasion, including a blue-and-green number that made her look as if seaweed were growing up her arms, was a Tony winner herself (for a part in Death and the Maiden).

Fires In The Mirror Pdf Version

225 capacity) performance space is set up proscenium style for the production. Without an understanding of the complex interrelations of their identities and their common bonds, racial groups in close proximity, such as the blacks and Jews in Crown Heights, are able to focus all of their rage and anger on each other, and violence inevitably follows. Meeting people face-to-face made it possible for Smith to move like them, sound like them, and allow what they were to enter her own body.

Fires In The Mirror Summary

The play is structured as follows: - Identity. Important quotes from the play deal with the event itself, the perceptions of the residents, the impact on the community, and the nature of racism and hated in general. Shange sees identity as an interplay between being a "part of [one's] surroundings" and "becom[ing] separate from them. " Each scene is titled with the person's name and a key phrase from that interview. Diverse Perspectives. He "smiles frequently, " and he is "upbeat, impassioned… Full.

168, April 30, 1993, p. 44. Lots of volume, clear enunciation, teeth, and tongue very involved in his speech. " Sonny Carson then describes his connection with the black youth community and his motivation for leading them in activism against the white power structure. But for reasons I'm still trying to understand, I couldn't work up my usual quotient of rage over the ceremony. Letty Cottin Pogrebin offers an explanation of this confusing set of circumstances in her scene "Near Enough to Reach. " Performance Schedule: Fri, March 26 @ 7:30pm. Using both the most contemporary techniques of tape recording and the oldest technique of close looking and listening, Smith went far beyond "interviewing" the participants in the Crown Heights drama.

The deaths of Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenabum stirred up hatreds. The effective reason is that the audience's perspective is pushed to be less biased because they have one person displaying all these diverse points of view. Two large trapezoidal slabs painted to look like brick walls are hung at angles upstage and suspended a foot from the floor, which is itself a raised trapezoidal plinth. The simile is apt in describing his grief and rage, not to mention the grief and rage expressed throughout the country in these inflamed times. Implicitly defending the young black people who used phrases like "Heil Hitler" in the riots, he argues that they do not even know who Hitler was, and that the only black leader they know is Malcolm X. While trying to define and explain the racial situation in Crown Heights, he becomes frustrated with the English-language vocabulary about race and he stresses that the language's inadequacy in expressing ideas about race "is a reflection / of our unwillingness / to deal with it honestly. After enjoying marked success in his private education, Jeffries worked and studied in Europe and Africa and then took a position as professor of African American studies at the City University of New York.

Smith describes her as "Direct, passionate, confident, lots of volume, " and it is also apparent from Pogrebin's lines that she is self-confident and eloquent. The most harrowing words, though, belong to the survivors of the dead. The City Theatre's intimate (ca. Lousy Language – Robert Sherman explains that words like "bias" and "discrimination" are not specific enough, leading to poor communication. How does his/her public perception compare to his/her portrayal in Smith's play? Ovens – Rabbi Shea Hecht does not believe integration is the solution to the problems of race relations. Sat, April 24 @ 7:30pm (live and live streamed). 1 page at 400 words per page). Seven Verses – Minister Conrad Mohammed theorizes and explains that blacks are God's "chosen people", and expresses his views on the suffering of blacks at the hands of white people. Rugoff, Ralph, "One-Woman Chorus, " in Vogue, Vol. Tensions between Jews and blacks in the Crown Heights neighborhood had been running high because of the perception among Lubavitchers that there was a great deal of black anti-Semitism, and because of the perception among blacks that there was a great deal of white racism and that Lubavitchers enjoyed preferential treatment from the police. By this time, he had developed a profound interest in working as an advocate for black social advancement, and he had begun to espouse some of his key theories about race and race relations. 'You better warm up the ovens again' from blacks? An African American man in his late teens or early twenties, the anonymous young man from the scene "Bad Boy" insists that young black men are either athletes, rappers, or robbers and killers, but not more than one of these things.

For academics, she is most often studied for her innovative practices of acting and playwriting.

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