- By Anna Deavere Smith
- Directed by Nicole Brewer
- In Partnership with Long Wharf Theatre
A Contemporary Classic
In the late summer of 1991, long-simmering tensions between Black and Jewish residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn erupted in a series of violent events. Renowned playwright Anna Deavere Smith interviewed more than 100 people about those tension-filled days, creating a striking tapestry of oral histories examining that flashpoint moment in American history. A single performer brings those stories to electrifying life in Fires in the Mirror.
Featuring Khanisha Foster and Cloteal L. Horne
Two actors will alternate performances embodying Anna Deavere Smith’s iconic 26-character tour-de-force.
RUN TIME: Approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes including a 15 minute intermission.
CONTENT TRANSPARENCY: Fires In The Mirror catalogs reflections of the Crown Heights Riots, a racially-charged conflict that engulfed the New York neighborhood in 1991. This play contains strong language and references to racism, slavery, lynching, antisemitism, sexual violence, and the Holocaust.
Anna Deavere Smith, Playwright
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright who is said to have created a new form of theatre. In popular culture as an actress—Nurse Jackie, Blackish, Madame Secretary, The West Wing, The American President, Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, others. Books: Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines. She has created more than person shows based on hundreds of interviews. The best known of those are Fires in The Mirror, Twilight: Los Angeles, and Let Me Down Easy. Fires and Twilight look at US race relations. The latter deals with health care. They were all performed in US regional theaters, and Twilight was on Broadway. Her current project Notes From the Field: Doing Time In Education, looks at what is now called the “school to prison pipeline”—disciplinary practices in schools in poor communities that increase the likelihood that those youths will spend part of their lives incarcerated. Three of her plays have been broadcast on PBS.
The National Endowment named her the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer for the Humanities. The lecture is the highest honor the government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Prizes include the National Humanities Medal presented by President Obama, a MacArthur fellowship, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, two Tony nominations, and two Obies. She was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her play Fires in the Mirror. She has received several honorary degrees. She is founder and director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University.
Nicole Brewer, Director
Name: Nicole Brewer
Pronouns: (e.g. she/her, they/them, he/him, something else) she/her
One sentence introduction: Nicole is an antiracist cultural worker who uses theater to strengthen connections across differences to foster healing, joy and liberation.
Selected Theatre Credits Elsewhere: Kamala WAM, Milk Like Sugar
St. Louis Black Rep, Songs For A New World Sheridan College, Ties that Bind
Catholic University, Jonkonnu Howard University
Creative inspiration: The complexity of the constant-chaotic-convex-concave-consciousness called life.
Community Engagement/Activist work: Facilitator of Anti-Racist Theatre Trainings.
Awards/proudest achievements: I’m most proud of being a caregiver to some extraordinary children.
Final word: What comes next in the entertainment industry is up to us…I’m encouraged this time we may get it right.
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