From today's Washington Post:

Anna Deavere Smith and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius talk healthcare and booze

By The Reliable Source

Anna Deavere Smith chats with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, 2011. (HHS photo by Chris Smith)

Here's something to make your lunch break a little more interesting: a performance by Anna Deavere Smith in the lobby of your office building.
Standing on a makeshift stage at the Independence Avenue headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday afternoon, the acclaimed actress/playwright performed excerpts of her one-woman show, "Let Me Down Easy," for about 200 employees and health experts (including Surgeon General Regina Benjamin), followed by a brief discussion on health care with Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
"To say that the debate in this country has been volatile may be an understatement," said Sebelius.
"I think it's volatile everywhere," responded Smith.
Which makes it a perfect subject for the 60-year-old actress -- A-list provocateur, MacArthur "genius grant" recipient, professor and activist -- who's taking her look at health care (based on 300 interviews from doctors, patients and workers on three continents) beyond the confines of the theater. Plenty of VIPs (Sebelius, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Eric Holder, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan) have been to Arena Stage to see her perform, but Smith is also reaching into the community -- to HHS, National Institutes of Health, meetings with Hill staffers and policy experts -- to drum up even more debate on the hot-button issue.
After Smith's 30-minute performance and a standing ovation from the crowd, Sebelius played talk-show host to Smith, asking her to share the origins of the play, what she learned putting it together and the reactions in different parts of the country.
"You have the best questions," Smith praised her.
"No answers," quipped Sebelius dryly. "Lots of questions."
There was, Smith told her, one interesting difference between New York and D.C. audiences over a doctor's line about people who cope with tough issues using alcohol.
"New Yorkers didn't think that was funny," observed Smith. "In Washington, they think that's very funny. Do you all drink more?" The audience broke out in laughter.
"More than what?" asked Sebelius with a grin. "You would too, if you lived in Washington."

Drama with roots in the real world is burgeoning theater field

By Nelson Pressley
The Washington Post
Friday, January 21, 2011; 2:00 PM

Long before the reality-TV craze took off, there was Anna Deavere Smith, the virtuoso mimic who carried her tape recorder into riot minefields to create "Fires in the Mirror" (about New York's Crown Heights conflict in 1991) and "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992" (exploring the Rodney King beating and aftermath). Already a decade into her work then, Smith was a pioneer in terms of creating "documentary" theater. Aside from writer-director Emily Mann's "theater of testimony," which included "Execution of Justice" - at Arena Stage and then on Broadway in the mid-1980s, and dealing with Harvey Milk's assassination - Smith had few peers to emulate or models to work from.

Twenty years later, behold the burgeoning docudrama field. Examples of this surprisingly flexible form include "The Exonerated" (about death row inmates wrongly convicted) and journalist Lawrence Wright's solo stage forays ("My Trip to Al-Qaeda" in 2005, "The Human Scale" in Manhattan last fall). There's also Eve Ensler's perpetually performed "The Vagina Monologues," based on interviews. And there's Doug Wright's PulitzerPrize- and Tony Award-winning "I Am My Own Wife," which put facts up for grabs as the playwright rooted through documents and his own provocative interviews with a slippery East German transvestite who survived World War II.

"Some of the work has been very, very impactful," says Moises Kaufman, who directed "I Am My Own Wife" on Broadway. "These are works that over the last decade have been among the most performed plays in America."

The verbatim wave is hitting a high tide now at major Washington area theaters. Smith is holding forth at Arena Stage with "Let Me Down Easy" - a meditation on health, health care and death, drawn from 320 interviews and performed with her trademark panache as she impersonates doctors, patients and celebrities (Lance Armstrong, Ann Richards and others, including Ensler). . . .

Read the full article here.