"Is Race a Trope?

": Anna Deavere Smith and the Question of RacialPerformativity

s race a trope?"Anna Deavere Smith'sperformancesnot only ask but embody question.They also ask another, this equally importantquestion:"Whois asking?" Anna Deavere Smith is an AfricanAmericanperformance artistknown for her techniqueof interviewingsubjects,particularly on mattersof race,and then recreatingher subjects'responses with a differenceon-stage. She has recentlygained tremendous popularity for her work Twilight: Angeles,1992,part of her Los largerproject"Onthe Road:A Searchfor AmericanCharacter." The question in my title, "IsRacea Trope?", comes, however, not from me or from Anna Deavere Smithper se but from a performance of Smith'sin which she recreatesan interview she conducted with academicand criticaltheoristCarrollSmithRosenberg.'Earlyin the development of her techniqueof interviewing and then performingpeople of diverse races,ethnicities, genders, classes, professions,dialects,cadences,personalities, and opinions, Anna Deavere Smith performedan edited interview she'd conductedwith Smith-Rosenberg, who asks and explores the question "Israce a trope?"The answer to this question for Smith-Rosenberg complex, and Anna Deavere Smith's is answer is even more complex. performanceof Smith-Rosenberg's Not only do both social theoristssay that identity, in this case racialidentity, is experiencedas both a fact and as a trope,but Anna Deavere Smith incorporatesthis post-structuralist model of racialidentity into her acting approach.The question "Israce a trope?"is all the more interestingwhen it is asked in the context of a black woman (Smith),playing a white woman (SmithRosenberg),asking the question of the black woman who is now playing her. First,however, to get to the question of race as a trope, and how Anna Deavere Smithhas developed an acting techniquethat can embracethe complexity of this question,I want to move back to the context of currentacting practices,and then forwardagain into Anna Deavere Smith'sinterventionsinto approachesto racial identity and characterin theater.

Debby Thompson is Assistant Professor of English Colorado at State University, whereshe teaches classes in Modem Drama, Literary Theory, Multiand cultural Literature. is She currently completing book a entiledCasting Suspicions: Race,Identity Politics and in Contemporary American Theater. bookstudies The thewayscontemporary performances theater and practices participate both in andinterrogate American racial constructons an era in of post-identity politics.

hat I am calling Anna Deavere Smith'spost-structuralist acting practicesarose not out of her engagementwith race theory but out of her frustrationwith actpost-structuralist ing based in "psychologicalrealism"(Firesxxvi). While poststructuralistmodels of identity-notions of identity as "performative"-have become almost dogma in currentliterarytheory, acting practicein the U.S. has been slow to reflectthis shift in modW

African AmericanReview,Volume37, Number1

0 2003 Debby Thompson hmo

els of identity, and is still very much based in liberal humanism. Although anti-Naturalistic traditions, which have been quite strong in European drama, have always had a presence in American drama (in forms such as expressionism, surrealism, even camp and neo-melodrama), the preponderant mode has remained firmly a Naturalistic one. There have, of course, been many notable exceptions to Naturalistic theater in the U.S. Some prominent ones include The Living Theatre of Judith Malina and Julian Beck, the work of Joseph Chaikin and Roberta Sklar and the Open Theatre, El Teatro Campesino's Boal-influenced people's theatre, Richard Schechner's Environmental Theatre approaches, the Wooster Group, the campy, postmodern productions of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater and of the WOW Cafe, and many other experimental and avant-garde theaters.2 The most immediate precursor to Anna Deavere Smith's work is that of Adrienne Kennedy, whose 1964 Funnyhouseof a Negro takes a highly post-structuralist, anti-Naturalistic approach to character and identity,3 and whose A Movie Star Has To Star in Blackand White,which Smith directed in 1980, Smith credits as the beginning of her non-Naturalistic approach to personae and psychic life (Tate 198). Interestingly, the European anti-Naturalistic form that is most clearly a precursor to post-structuralist theater-Brechtian alienation and Epic Theater-has had very little presence in American drama, and particularly in mainstream (Broadway and offBroadway) theater, as can be seen in actors' training approaches. The preponderant philosophy underlying acting approaches taught in the U.S. remains one of liberal humanism. The majority of actors' training programs in North America continue to operate in variations of the Stanislavsky approach (or its American incarnation, Method Acting), which views human nature as transcultural and transhistorical, and views a charac-

ter's identity as having an essential core of interior objectives and the character's (or actor's) bodily acts as the outward manifestations of the character's interior identity. The "Naturalistic" Acting Approach varies from the versions of Stanislavsky himself to those of, for example, Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, Eric Morris, and William H. Macy and David Mamet. As different as these various commonly taught approaches seem to be, all believe that human nature is universal, and that the essence of acting is to uncover the human spirit, to bring out the universal in the specifics of human life. For example, the

the Practical Handbookfor Actorstates

that "the world needs theatre and the theatre needs actors who will bring the truth of the human soul to the stage" (Bruder et al. 7), and Hagen states that "internal" (or Naturalistic) acting "can become as timeless as human experience itself" (13). Because of the belief that all human beings share a common nature or soul, and that this commonality matters more than individual differences, actor and character can and should, in Naturalistic acting, connect through a shared human nature. Hence distinctions between the actor and the character, in Naturalistic acting, should disappear for the audience and become minimized (to varying degrees) for the actor. All of these differing Naturalistic acting approaches posit an "inner core" or "truth" or "essence" to a character, which houses a "through-line" or "super-objective" and other subsidiary "objectives." Furthermore, though these approaches differ on the degree to which the actor should "become" or "be" the character he/she is playing, all agree that the character is built up from the "instincts," "impulses," "common sense," and "truth" of the actor. Mamet says that "your greatest gift as an artist [is] your sense of truth" (Bruder et al. x) and that, as an actor, you must "follow the truth you feel in yourself" and "follow your common sense" (xi). Uta Hagen stipulates that "your own iden-

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tity and self-knowledge are the main sources for any characteryou may play. Most human emotions have been experiencedby each of us by the time we are eighteen,just as they have been by all human beings throughoutthe ages" (29). She continues:"Oncewe are on the trackof self-discoveryin terms of an enlargementof our sense of identity, and we now try to apply this knowledge to an identificationwith the characterin the play, we must make this transference,this finding of the characterwithin ourselves, through a continuing and overlapping series of substitutionsfrom our own experiences and remembrances, through the use of imaginativeextension of realities, and put them in the place of the fiction in the play" (34). Sanford Meisnerlikewise observes that he is "a very nonintellectualteacherof acting. My approachis based on bringing the actorback to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive.It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart,as it were, and that there'sno mentalityin it. (37) For EricMorris, "Theactor'sfundamentalquestion is: 'Whatis the reality and how can I make it real to me?'In this kind of trainingthe actordiscovers himself fully both on stage and off . . ." (1). Ac several of these quotes suggest, there is a strong strainof anti-intellectualism in most North Americanacting approaches, which, as I will show, Anna Deavere Smith'swork counters. An actor,in the Naturalistic approach,identifies with her character and her character's emotions by recalling her own reserves of emotionally rich and emotion-triggeringmemories him- or herself (Hagen) or by imagining in given circumstances(Meisner).Uta Hagen offers the example of an actor playing Desdemona in the murder scene:
with a foreboding of an unspecified disaster.I want to rid myself of a sense of mounting terror. As illogical as it may sound, I can use an experienceof waiting in a hospital room prior to
. .. I should see that I want to cope

surgery,even a dentist's office prior to a tooth extraction.The fears that rush in on me are largerand less static than some fictional,preconceivedfear for a Desdemona.(40)

Or, if the action is "makinga friend take the plunge," the actormay use "it'sas if I'm making my sister Mary go back to college" (Bruderet al. 79). The fear or pleading on-stage, then, will not be "manufactured" "indi(or cated")but "real." Hence, in the Naturalisticapproach,"actingis being." One problemwith this kind of striving for authenticityin performance is that it is based in the actor's self; it is "self-oriented." Because the characters representedmust remain within the emotional and experiential range of the actor,the range of identities and emotions possible for the characterare constrainedby the much more limited range of identities and emotions actuallyexperiencedand already known or at least imaginable (throughthe "magicif" or "as-if")by the actor.Furthermore, fundamentalto a post-structuralist critiqueof liberal humanist models of identity is the belief that ideology and ideological state apparati(including the arts) create "commonsense" or "obviousness" or "believability." Ideological state apparatimake us experienceideological structuresas deeply personal, natural, and instinctive.The way the actor'semotions and identities are experienced,then, will (in a post-structuralistmodel) be very much embedded in the ideological situations of the actors,but will be presented as "impul"the sive," "instinctive,""natural," truth of human nature."Naturalism,in other words, naturalizesideology. This "naturalistic" approachto acting in North America is, I suggest, one of an arrayof reasons that the institution of theater,although full of leftleaning, politically radicalpeople, remainsfor the most part extremely conservativein its envisioning of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual realities-

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and more importantlyof potential reali- Here Smith'sapproachto character ties not yet created. resemblesa Brechtianand incipiently Smith,by contrast,is determined post-structuralist mode. In Brechtian to encourage "other-oriented" rather theater,the actormust never "go so far than "self-based"approachesto acting as to be wholly transformedinto the (Firesxxvii). Insteadof "findingthe character played.... [Theactor's]feelcharacter within ourselves" (as Uta ings must not at bottom be those of the Hagen puts it), actorsshould look for character, that the audience's may so the characteroutsideof not at bottom be those of By approaching themselves. Instead of the charactereither" building a character (Brecht193-94).This racial identity as from the inside out, detachmentof actor actors should build the performative, Anna from characteris imporcharacterfrom the out- Deavere Smith can tant to Brechtianacting because Brecht,like most side in. While "a basic tenet of psychological question the fact of Marxistsand postMarxists,believed that realism is that characrace without "humannature"is not ters live inside of you and that you create a discounting racism's universal or transhistorical, but is historically character through a very real effects. specific and socially conprocess of realizing your own similarityto the character," structed.Theatershould, then, take an Smith is developing "a techniquethat historicalapproachto characterand to would begin with the other and come the human condition, even in its porto the self" (Firesxxvi-xxvii).In Smith's trayalof the present. Ratherthan natuacting approach,the distinction conduct, ralizinga character's remains between actorand character Brechtiantheater"leadsreal conduct to decisively intact.Smithsays that, in acquirean element of 'unnaturalness,' performance,she's "thereintellectually thus allowing the real motive forces to and never go[es] away intellectually. be shorn of theirnaturalnessand Some actorswould say you should go become capableof manipulation" away intellectually,but I'm always (Brecht191).Such a theatricalprocess there"(Tate201).The goal of perforconstitutesBrecht'sfamous mance becomes, then, not authenticity "AlienationEffect": representation "A but explorationof the gap between self that alienatesis one which allows us to as and other, actorand character, well recognizeits subject,but at the same as of the gaps within our seemingly time makes it seem unfamiliar.... The linear ideological narratives. new alienationsare only designed to Of her experiencedirecting free socially-conditionedphenomena Kennedy'sMovieStar,Smithsays: from the stamp of familiaritywhich protectsthem against our grasp today' . . . it was white actors having to do alienation"treats (192).Theatrical this blackstuff and still be BetteDavis. So then I just began to tearapartin my social situationsas processes, and own thinking all the things that build tracesout all their inconsistencies" personaeand psychic life. WhichI had (193),and inconsistenciesin individual never really believed in anyway. I and culturalidentities present sites for sorta disliked the traditional way I had intervention,and denaturalization, been taught that everything comes from inside. That for me to be any are change. Hence "contradictions our character it has to come from me, hope!"(Brecht47). Anna, and my life.... So I had this A brief example of Smith's opportunity to take apart that thing Brechtiantechniquescan help illustrate and not assume anymore that this her differencefrom Naturalisttheater [pointing to her gut] had a direct line and humanistphilosophy. In the to this [pointing to her head]. (Tate 198) "SevenVerses"piece in Fires,Smith

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performsthe MinisterConrad Mohammedbeing interviewedby herself. What gets emphasized in this piece, particularlyin its performance, is not how ConradMohammedcan be seen as a local and specific example of the universal human struggle for identity and for justice,but how Mohammedis a subjectof a complex and conflictedhistoricalmoment which markshim with its contradictions. Indeed, even as Mohammed argues for a pan-African(or at least Afrocentric)culturalidentity, the performancesuggests the opposite. Mohammedcontrasts"thetotal subjugation of the Blackman"with other forms of physical suffering:
You can go into Bangladeshtoday, Calcutta,
(He strikes the tablewith a sugar packet threeorfour times)

New Delhi, Nigeria, Some really So-calledunderdevelopednation, And I don't carehow low thatperson's humanityis
(He opens the sugar packet)

whetherthey never had runningwater, if they'd never seen a televisionor anything. They are in betterconditionthanthe Blackman and woman In Americatoday Rightnow. Even at Harvard. They have a contextualunderstanding of what identityis.
(He strikes the tablewith anothersugar packetthreeorfour times and opens it.)

But the Blackman has no knowledge of that; He's an amnesiavictim. He has lost knowledge of himself and he's living a beast life. So this proves thatit was the greatest
crime. (Stirring his coffee) (Stirring his coffee) (Starts stirring his coffee)

Becausewe were cut off fromour past.

(Fires 55-56)4

Smith emphasizes, even alienates, Mohammed'sconsumption of sugar and beverage-which in performance could read as coffee or tea. His/her aggressive stirringand strikingof

sugar packets constitutesa Brechtian "socialgest." Coffee, tea, and sugar were not only goods whose production historicallydepended on slavery, but they continue to be goods produced (predominantly)by people of color under slave-like conditions. Mohammedunwittingly participatesin the very conditionhe condemns, even as he condemns it. But Smith's performance does not suggest hypocrisy on Mohammed'spart;rather,it illustrates the complexity of our historical moment, in which oppression of people of color is so global and so naturalized that we can't see it unless it is aggressively alienated for us. Indeed, it may be impossible, particularlyfor people of color in our currentpostmodern,multinational-corporation-driven, systemicallyracistbut allegedly equal Americanculture,to speak and act with a unitaryvoice and a solid and consistentcore. Relatedto the notion of a solid and consistentcore is humanisticor "Naturalistic" acting's model of identity as "deep,"not superficial.The Naturalisticmantrathat "actingis being"is rooted in the liberalhumanist belief in a true, core self, from which all doing and perceiving springs. Morris states that you can't "teacha person to act if he isn't connected to his inner self" (2). Sensorychoices (or sense memories)become more true and real when they "touchthe nucleus of the individual self" (3). True Being is prior to acting. The individual self antedates, in this model, all senses and actions that it experiences.In other words, identity in the humanist model is something you have;what you do is always a secondary reflectionof a preexisting, interioridentity. The Macy/Mametmethod would, at first glance, seem to be the exception to this model, for this approachaccordswith Aristotle'snotion that dramatic"character"is defined as "the sum total of an individual's actions"(74). "Toact means to do," it posits, "so you must always have something specific to do onstage or you will immediately stop

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acting"(Bruderet al. 13).But even with this approach'sinsistencethat acting is doing,and that characteris action,it posits a prior self-hood to the actor's actions:
The reason great actors are so compelling is that they have the courageto bring their personalities to bear on everything they do. Don't ever play a part as someone else would play it. Rememberthat it is you onstage, not some mythicalbeing called the character. For your purposes, the character exists on the printed page for analysis only.... You have the right and the responsibilityto bring to the stage who you are.Yourhumanityis an absolutely vital contribution to any play you act in. (75)

not self-generated(indeed, the acts generatethe "self").The ideal of an innate,coherentidentity, indeed, is an effect of performancewhich erases its "Genderreality is own performativity: performativewhich means ... that it is real only to the extent that it is per527). In other formed"("Performative" words, gender identity-or any other kind of identity-is not something that you have,but something that you door, at least, something that you have //only"by doing it again and again and again.
And this notion that identity -in

The actor,then, hasan identity, even as Furthermore, he/she doesa character. there is a radicaldistinctionin this Naturalisticacting approachbetween are the way characters createdand the way our own human identities are created. and postBrechtian,post-Marxist, models of identity would structuralist posit just the opposite. In the work of JudithButler,for example (an example which can well serve as a synecdoche for a whole body of work on postmodels of identity),identistructuralist ties are radicallytheatricaland performative, constitutedby repeatedposes, postures, acts, and gestures.5For is Butler,"theatricality" a phenomenon of daily life and is indeed the phenombecomes enon by which "exteriority" identity. Butler'swork focus"interior" but es on gender identity in particular, could apply, with modifications,to racial,ethnic, sexual, and other identities as well. Butlerassertsthat a gender or is by no means a transcultural transhistoricalidentity, or even an identity stable within a given culture,climate, or body; it is, rather,"anidentity tenuously constitutedin time-an identity of institutedthrough a stylizedrepetition 519).Through acts"("Performative" repetition,the performancesof gender and other identities are legitimated, much like in ritualsocial drama.6The gendered acts that one performsare

our case, racialand ethnic identity-is but not something there, something constantlymade and remade, holds out the potentialfor change. When an assigned identity is not re-citedand reperformedperfectly,then that identity can shift. Resistantor subversive performativerepetitions,always done, of course,under surveillanceand the threatof potentiallysevere punishment, are neverthelesspossible. The subjectproduced through performative reiterationof norms can also somewhat re-performthose norms with a difference, and even, potentially,constitute performativeidentities not yet normalized or even scriptedor embodied. ForAnna Deavere Smith,racial identity is radicallyperformative,so what interestsher as an actor is a person's struggle within and against scripts.When interviewing subjectsto she representas characters, tries "to createan atmospherein which the interviewee would experiencehis/her own authorship"(Firesxxxi). or Character, identity, lies not in a preexisting essence but in the process of self-authorship:
... everyone, in a given amount of time, will say something that is like poetry. The process of getting to that poetic moment is where "character" filled with uhs and ums and, in fact, the wrong words, if any words at all, and almost always what would be considered "bad grammar." I suppose much of communicationcould be narrowed down to "the point." This project is not about a point, it is about a
lives.... The pursuit is frequently

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one charactermight assert his or her "true"racialidentity, other characters radicallyquestion the "truth"of identiSmith believes that Americanchar- ty categories,particularlybased on acter "lives not in what has been fully race.While some individual characters articulated,but in what is in the may try to fit their senses of self-identiprocess of being articulated,not in the ty (particularly racial/ethnicidentity) smooth-sounding words, but in the into essentialistmodels, the very forvery moment that the smooth-sound- mat of the performancepieces itself ing words fail us" (Firesxli). Thatis, resists such models-an African characteris alive in those moments of Americanwoman playing African performancewith a difference,in Americanmen, Hasidic Jewish men which scripts and performativeacts are and women, a Koreangrocer,Jamaican in the process of shifting, if ever so immigrants,hip hop artists,and many slightly. So Smith is interestednot in other identities quite differentfrom her what is consistent about a subject,but own. If Brechtimplicitly,and Judith in what is radicallyinconsistent.She Butlerexplicitly,argues that identities focuses in on the internalcontradicare not fixed things that you have,but tions in characters,on the evidence of things that you do,Anna Deavere "faultlines." Smith'sacting approachincarnatesthis In pursuing the relationship model by making identities not nouns between language and character, Smith but verbs, actions, self-activations. startedwith a statementmade by her grandfather.During her days of classical actortraining,she rememberedher nother way of saying that racial grandfather'sstatementas "Ifyou say A a word often enough it becomes your identity, for Anna Deavere own" (Firesxxiii). Later,she learned Smith, is radicallyperformativewould that her grandfather'sstatementactual- be to say that race is a trope. And this ly was "Ifyou say a word often enough idea is precisely what one of her interit becomes you." This differenceviewees, CarrollSmith-Rosenberg, sugbetween words becoming your own gests: and words becoming you -is the difIn otherwords, ferencebetween humanist and postIt's people who are tryingto address structuralistmodels of acting and, the old Marxistparadigm of infrastructure being the realstuff indeed, of selfhood. If words become and superstructure being things like your own, there is a "you"pre-existing languageand literature, the words;but if words become "you," and saying, uh but wait a second, then your "you-ness,"your very selflanguageis tied in with that. hood, is made up of your interaction How do you define sexuality? How do you find-how do you define with words. Or, turned around,you race? become you by saying words. Identity And gender and racebecome then I isn't "there"; "alwaysbeing negotiit's thinkemblematicof this. ated" (Firesxxxiii). How do you thinkof this? Is racea trope? Subsequentto this realization, Uh, to what extent is it real? Smith moved her acting approachfrom Um, if you're saying, that it's a social individual to communal or social levconstructionand thereforea trope, els. To explore community identities, do you lose some of your politicaluh she went to communities in crisis, most uh uh uh uh talk? Uh uh uh so uh how do you hang notably Crown Heights (New York) on-because if if'sif if'sa construction and Los Angeles, just aftera major, and and and and and then it's not real, raciallyinflecteduprising in each city. then it's just a fantasy. In Smith's interviews with membersof So how can you hang onto the concept these post-uprisingcommunities,while of a social construction
lives route. It is on the road. Character in the linguistic road as well as the destination.(Fires xxxi-xxxii)
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and still maintainthe realityof gender and raceas politicaluh uh uh forces. And so thesewould be some of the ways in which uh which some of the ways thatwhich which could then be more generallystated as between lanwhat is the relationship guage and and and power. And we would be saying we would be saying [sipsdrink] that thereis a hegemonicaldiscourse which very few people mostlywhite males construct. And thereare a varietyof othersocial dialects and you can in fact speak more than one dialectat the same time. We in academiahave to speak the hegemonicaldiscoursein orderto
survive.

How does this affectus? How does this affect the discoursesthemselves? How can we in factcorruptand co-opt the eh corruptuh how in fact does the hegemonicaldiscoursein factcorruptand co-optus? Thesewould some of uh be some of the issues thatwe arevery very concernedaboutHow this eh works in our lives. ("Identities")

I take it that the "it" of the second line is a field of scholarship applying postMarxist and post-structuralist approaches to racial, gender, and sexual identity. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg seems to be explaining to Anna Deavere Smith how post-structuralist theory applies to our understanding of everyday performances of race and gender. Many of Anna Deavere Smith's interview-based performance pieces follow this pattern: They begin by inhabiting and poking gentle fun at the discourse the subject is occupying, then find the moments in which the subject struggles within and against this discourse, and then come to a moment where the subject-discourse interaction reaches "poetry."7 That is certainly the pattern in this piece. Smith-Rosenberg's language falters a bit when she asks, "How do you find-how do you define race?" While she intends to ask, "How do you define race," she initially utters the word find. Though Smith-Rosenberg corrects her-

self, Anna Deavere Smith's performance of Smith-Rosenberg preserves the tension between race as something to "find and face" and as something to "define"-a tension reflecting the conflicting models of race as something already there, waiting to be uncovered, and race as something to be constructed. This "slip of the tongue" is not a Freudian slip; it does not reveal the repressed, unconscious material of the individual character's unique, "true self." If Smith-Rosenberg's "slip" reveals an unconscious at all, it is a political unconscious. Her tongue hits on anxieties and contradictions in American culture's search for racial identity. Some of Smith-Rosenberg's struggles with language are outright funny. For instance, her struggle to find the word talk,when asking, "If you're saying, that it's a social construction and therefore a trope, / do you lose some of your political uh uh uh uh uh talk?" unwittingly and amusingly embodies its point. But the question, and the struggle for language embedded within it, embodies a very serious question. Likewise, while it is very funny that Smith-Rosenberg, like me, speaks a very dense, multi-syllabic, academic discourse under the name of speaking of and for the people and daily life, she also has profound moments of absolute clarity. "Is race a trope?"-a question enabled by (and perhaps only formulatable in) post-structu'ralist academicspeak, but all in monosyllables-gets at, I think, a fundamental question of our time. What does it mean to say that race is-or isn't-real? What's at stake with this claim? Who is empowered by it, and under what conditions? Anna Deavere Smith, in her performance of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, embodies Smith-Rosenberg's question. This is not "color-blind casting." Anna Deavere Smith does not wear make-up or manipulate lighting to appear to be the white woman she is portraying. In fact, Smith accentuates the difference-racial and other-between herself and her subjects. That a black

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woman is playing a white woman is part of the meaning of the piece. Unlike Naturalisticacting, in which Anna Deavere Smith would "become" and CarrollSmith-Rosenberg, unlike the philosophy of color-blindcasting, in which the race of the actorhas no bearing on the race or meaning of the here Anna Deavere Smith's character, self-consciousand self-reflexiveportrayalof CarrollSmith-Rosenberg embodies the questions being discussed: Is race innate?a mere act?a social construct?a lived reality?Can race be transgressed?transcended? reproduced?There'sa crucialtension here:On the one hand, Anna Deavere Smith can clearly perform,recreate, embody, inhabit,"become"another race.On the other hand, she is just as clearly an AfricanAmericanwoman playing a white woman-and even if we "blind"ourselves to her "color,"we are recreatingher race by the very act of consciously and conscientiously blinding ourselves to it. It is this tension that Smith-Rosenberg explains and Anna Deavere Smith embodies simultaneously. Many people, and particularly white, middle-class liberalhumanists, want passionately to believe in and practicecolor-blindcasting both onstage and in daily life. They want to believe that race is a "mere"construct, and if we stop reconstructingit, it will go away. That,for them, is a good thing, for if race is only a matterof individual identity, then it is not a systemic problem.And, of course,at this point in U.S. history, white people-and white supremacy-have more to gain by ignoring race than by seeing it. Ignoringrace enables white folks to escape the label "prejudiced" and, at the same time, avoid dealing with the very real problemof systemic racism in the Americaneconomy. Thus, liberalhumanists often hear in Smith-Rosenberg's piece that race is not real-it's a trap-and are puzzled by what they see as the "reverse racism"of AfricanAmericanswho insist on their own black identity. In the same "Onthe Road"projectin

which Anna Deavere Smith performs "Is CarrollSmith-Rosenberg's Race a Trope?", also performsthe African she Americanplaywright and director George C. Wolfe, authorof TheColored Museum and directorof Smith's own work. And her Wolfe emphatically rejectsthe notion that race is a trope that mutually constructsnotions of and "whiteness": "blackness"
I am not going to place myself in relationshipto your whiteness. We can talkaboutyour whiteness if you want to talkaboutthat. But my blacknessdoes not
resis-ex-re--

existin relationshipto your whiteness. It is not in relationshiptoit exists. It exists. And like I said, I come froma very
complex,

confused, neu-rotic, sometimesself-destructive reality, but it is a realitycompleteunto itself. And then you'rewhite. And uh like I said uh I am not gonna defend the the the the the uh uh define uh to my blackness according yourwhiteness becausemy blacknessis once again it is a it is it is complex, uh demonic, it's ridiculous, it's absurd, it's all the stuff. And that'swhat I found so fascinating aboutpeople's reactionto Colored Museum. Becausehow could I say these things aboutblackpeople and not be uh be saying white is better?... And that'swhat I found real real real real real realreal fascinating. And what that told me was the shit that they were accusingme of is alive and well and blooming and they water it and tend to it daily with theirown shit. And they do not want to set uh accept responsibilityfor it so once again back on me. they put the responsibility Becauseuh by confrontingtheirown stuff, it makesthem feel small. But,I mean,I have majordemons, but that is none of thethat thatthis uh nah thateh nah nah Black il is. where my extraordinariness

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word is, and with a significant pause after the is, so that "Blackis" becomes its own emphatic, self-contained senWolfe's tongue, too, has trouble tence.) And a very essentialist statearticulating the word define,but instead ment it is. Is George C. Wolfe less of confusing it withfind, he confuses it sophisticated in his post-structuralist with defend.For Smith-Rosenberg, find- theory than Carroll Smith-Rosenberg ing race and defining race form a dialec- is? One look at his play The Colored tal and confusing relationship. For Museum-beyond the scope of this curWolfe, defining blackness and defending rent paper-would suggest otherwise. blackness are both synonymous and Rather, I would argue that, at the very distinctly different activities. Similarly, same moment when it is politically when Smith represents Wolfe attempt- progressive for a white woman to coning to assert that his blackness exists sider that race may be a trope, it is independently of whiteness, she shows politically progressive for a blackman his tongue offering resist for exist. to argue that "Black is." That is, the Racial identity, in Smith's piece, is important socio-cultural work of our much more of an embattled site of current political moment is to historidefense and resistance for the black cize, to de-mystify whiteness-to see theatre artist than it is for the white whiteness as trope and construct-and academic. With whiteness looming in at the same time to insist on the very Wolfe's thoughts and later in his senreal ways in which racial identity has tence, resistance comes simultaneous congealed under conditions of oppreswith-or rather prior to-existence. sion. While oppressed communities Even as Wolfe asserts the lack of relaneed to unite in pride, pride in the very tionship between black identity and identity formed within conditions of whiteness, Smith's performance of oppression, privileged communities Wolfe's assertion also suggests the need to understand, first, that they are opposite. Wolfe's "slip," revealing the performative resistance of black identi- indeed privileged and, second, privity to whiteness, prior to the assertion leged through a system of racism that of blackness's independent existence, should no longer be ignored. For seemingly contradicts Wolfe's powerwhites in America, in other words, one ful statement, but without taking away of the greatest parts of white privilege the power of that statement. Again, is not having to recognize white privithis "slip" reveals not the individual lege as white privilege. Whites have the anxieties of Wolfe's true but unconluxury of denying that race is, whether scious self; rather, it reveals cultural ontologically grounded or not. Smith's struggles and contradiction around the acting approach embraces both sides of status and experiences of race in this double bind: She brings out of America. George C. Wolfe's interview two Even more fundamentally, blacksimultaneous views: That racial identiness, for Wolfe, is not merely a trope: fy is plural, confusing, absurd, self-conblackis. Amidst all the confusion about racial discourse, both in Wolfe's mono- tradictory, and that racial identity logue and around him-amidst all the is-that it is a non-dialectical essence, extraordinary and singular. Wolfe's slips of the tongue, the uhs, the ums, answer, then, is also double-race both uh nah that eh nah the "that that this is and is not a trope. And in the act of nah"-one statement is profoundly racial identification we all need both to clear: "Black is." (In the transcription on paper, the line is a sentence: "Black insist on the historical categories for is where my extraordinariness is." But racial identity so deeply embedded in in performance, Smith delivers the line American economic structures and to disturb and displace them. with tremendous emphasis on the

And thatis what I found so extraordinarily confusing.

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In Firesin theMirror, interviewee Angela Davis argues this point with the figure of a rope:
I am tentativeabout race but I am not tentativeabout racism.... I thinkwe need to develop new ways of looking at community. Racein the old sense has become an increasinglyobsolete way community of constructing becauseit is based on immutablebiological facts way. in a pseudo-scientific Now this does not mean thatwe ignore
racism.

I'm not suggesting that we do not ourselves ourcommunities; in anchor I feel very anchoredin my variouscommunities. But I thinkthat, to use a metaphor,the rope attachedto that anchorshould be long enough to allow us to move into othercommunities, to understandand leam.

Racismis at the originsof this concept of race. It's not the otherway around.... As a matterof fact in orderfor Europeancolonialists to attempt to conquerthe world, to colonize the world, they had to constructthis notion of the populationsof the earthbeing divided into certain firmbiological communities, and that'swhat I thinkwe have to go backand consider. now I So when I use the word "race" put it in quotations. Becauseif we don't transform this intransigent rigid notion of race, we will be caught up in this cycle of genocidal violence that is at the originsof our history. So I think... thatwe have to find differentways of coming together....

Angela Davis puts "race"in quotation marks,because it is, in a sense, a trap-a trap constructedby and upholding racism.And yet racism cannot simply be done away with by deeming the concept of race as a mere trap that we shouldn't fall into, and that we can avoid by not invoking "race." Raceis a very real identity category which has become systemic, so to ignore race would be to allow systemic racismto continue as it is. But to live in rigid categoriesof race also only reenmeshes them, and constrainsus from imagining other possible identity categories and communities,much like the Realistactoris constrainedwithin already existing constructsof reality. Fortheatreto captureracialand other identities in our currentcultural moment, we need an other-oriented acting approachof the kind that Anna Deavere Smith is attemptingto develop, which can present race as simultaneously both anchoredand mobile, both fact and act, both trap and trope. By approachingracialidentity as performative,Anna Deavere Smith can question the fact of race without discounting racism'svery real effects.

1. Anna Deavere Smith, "Identities, Mirrorsand Distortions."The transcription is mine. 2. For a good overview of Experimental theater in the U.S. from 1955 to 1983, see McNamara and Dolan. 3. For a discussion of Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro as offering a post-structuralist model of character and identiy, see my "Reversing Blackface Minstrelsy, Improvising Racial Identiy." 4. This quotation is taken from the published text. The words in the PBS production of Fires in the Mirrorvary slightly. 5. See Judith Butler, "PerformativeActs," Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter, and Excitable see Parker and Sedgwick. Speech. For more discussion on identity as "performative," 6. On ritualsocial drama, see Turner. 7. Tania Modleski sees it more as a dialectic than a pattem of movement:"... Smith's work brilliantly oscillates between these two modes of repeftiton: repeftiton in the form of mimetic rivalry, rooted in envy and anger, and repetition as a transformative process, yielding complex surprises and illustrafing how repetition is always repetition with a difference" (65).

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Works Cited

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. John Willett. New York: Hilland Wang, 1964. Bruder, Melissa, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, and Scott Zigler. A Practical Handbook for the Actor. New York:Vintage, 1986. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex. "New York: Routledge, 1993. . Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997 . Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. . "PerformativeActs and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990. 270-82. Hagen, Uta. Respect forActing. With Haskel Frankel. New York: Macmillan, 1973. McNamara, Brooks, and Jill Dolan, eds. The Drama Review: ThirtyYears of Commentary on the Avant-Garde. Ann Arbor: UMI Research, P, 1986. Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisneron Acting. New York: Vintage, 1987. Modleski, Tania. 'Doing Justice to the Subjects-Mimetic Art in a MulticulturalSociety: The Work of Anna Deavere Smith." Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Ed. Barbara Christian, Elizabeth Abel, and Helene Moglen. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. 57-76. Morris, Eric, and Joan Hotchkis. No Acting Please. New York: Perigee, 1979. Parker, Andrew, and Eve K. Sedgwick, eds. Performativitiyand Performance: Essays from the English Institute. New York: Routledge, 1995. Smith, Anna Deavere. Fires in the Mirror:Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities. New York: Anchor, 1993. -. "Identities, Mirrorsand Distortions." On the Road: A Search for American Character. Written, directed, and performed by Smith. Curated and produced by George C. Wolfe. New York: New York Shakespeare Festival's 'Moving Beyond the Madness: A Festival of New Voices." Recorded 12 Dec. 1991. -. Twilight:Los Angeles, 1992. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Tate, Greg. "Bewitching the Other: In Fires in the Mirror,Anna Deavere Smith Wears Her Words." Village Voice 12 July 1992:198-201. Thompson, Deborah. "Reversing Blackface Minstrelsy, Improvising Racial Identity:Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro." Post-Identity 1. 1 (1997): 13-38. Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1974. -. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982. Wolfe, George C. The Colored Museum. New York: Grove P, 1988.

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