Notes From the Field
Page 10
One of the things I have cherished most in composing and performing the music for Notes from the Field was the extraordinary amount of freedom Anna gave me as an artist to respond to her work. For me, performing with Anna every night was like watching John Coltrane play his saxophone. She was that present, and it affected me greatly. So much of organizing music for the characters in the play was a process of trial and error through workshops, previews, and initial runs. By the time we got to Second Stage Theater, we had found the right balance of music, including themes that had become an essential part of the fabric of the play. I am very thankful to Anna Deavere Smith for the opportunity of a lifetime.
October 1, 2018
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are so many people who were essential to the Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project, of which Notes from the Field is the key element. Without the original group of social justice philanthropists who, in 2011, introduced me intellectually to what is variously called the school-to-prison pipeline or the poverty-to-prison pipeline, I would never have gone on this journey. They are acknowledged below with all of the others who supported the project financially.
I am eternally grateful to all the artists who extended their time and creative power to the play, the film, and the project mission. Theater is not a lucrative profession. Nonprofit movie-making is not lucrative. Many of the artists who worked on the play and/or film have robust professional lives and could have used their time and ideas elsewhere.
As I attempt to acknowledge everyone who helped out, if I have failed to do so, I apologize deeply.
And I extend my profound gratitude to the more than two hundred and fifty people who spoke with me here in the US and in Finland. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for supporting our artistic endeavor and the children whose lives we seek to improve with this book.
* * *
For making this book possible: thank you to my wonderful literary agent Gloria Loomis and to steady assistant editor Catherine Tung. To my editor, LuAnn Walther—for this and all the times you have put me in print—thank you for your editing, your patience, and your vote of confidence.
Stephanie Schneider, for your invaluable assistance as I worked to turn the language of performance into this book.
* * *
Chief judge of the Yurok Tribe, Abby Abinanti, a forever thank-you to you and your tribal community for providing a watershed moment in my ongoing search to understand American character.
Kimber Riddle, Michael Bentt, Ann Hould-Ward, Daniel Irving Rattner, Cheryl Hendrickson, Lisa Fischer, Amy Stoller, Michael Leon Thomas, Alisa Solomon, J. Stephen Sheppard, and Allen Bromberger for being deep in the trenches with me, whether on the road, in a dressing room, over a meal or a drink, on a phone call solving this or that problem, or alone together in a rehearsal hall, still laboring over lines to learn or performance challenges to overcome when everybody else had gone home.
Marcus Shelby for your music and for rich conversations from the very beginning of this project.
Gary Goetzman, film producer, for moving production forward even after the death of Jonathan Demme, who was originally slated to direct the film.
Ann Beeson for introducing me to the phenomenon of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Carole Rothman and Sara Garonzik for walking into that first big meeting with funders and for supporting the project as a play before there was one word imagined. To Darren Walker for hosting that meeting.
Blake Alcantara, David Lockard, Zoë Norman-Hunt, Elise Sokolow, my through-thick and through-thin team, for your artistic and logistical support. Remember the hilarity and the surprise discoveries more than the tough times.
Russlynn Ali, Kavitha Mediratta, Diana Cohn, Mary Lou Fulton, Jory Steele, Claude Steele, Sean Reardon, Julia Mendoza, Michael Margitich, Brian Berkopec, Ellen Poss, Erlin Ibrick, Robert Sherman, Dan Zingale, Linda Darling Hammond, Ann Dowley, and Linda Goldstein for initial and continued conversations grounded in the reality of the issues addressed.
* * *
At the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University: Diane Paulus, Diane Borger, Diane Quinn, and Ryan McKittrick. At Second Stage Theatre, New York City: Carole Rothman, Christopher Burney, and Casey Reitz. At Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Tony Taccone, Susie Medak and Sarah McArthur. At the Philadelphia Theatre Company: Sara Garonzik and Bridget Cook. At Baltimore Center Stage: Kwame Kwei-Armah and Stephen Richard. For the LIFT Festival production at the Royal Court Theatre, London: Vicky Featherstone, Beki Bateson, and David Binder.
Leonard Foglia, director, for creating one gorgeous off-Broadway production and one practical tour-ready production of Notes from the Field for the theater. You are a meticulous poet. I’m honored always to be in your company.
Kristi Zea, director, for taking the lead at the request of the late Jonathan Demme and directing the film version of Notes from the Field with such generosity, grace, humor, and creativity.
Theatrical designers: Howell Binkley, Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, Riccardo Hernandez, Elaine McCarthy, Alexander V. Nichols, Leon Rothenberg, Dan Moses Schreier, Tania Ribalow, Anthony Dickey, Maria Verel, Michael Ramsaur.
At HBO: Richard Plepler, Casey Bloys, Len Amato, Tara Grace, Maria Zuckerberg, Angela Tarantino, Nyle Washington, Dennis Williams, Lucinda Martinez.
Film designers: Declan Quinn, Doug Hsuzti, Paul Snyder, Mary Bailey.
Nori Chia, Steven Sharesian, Rocco Caruso, and everyone at The Playtone Company. Frank Garritano, Gillian Appleby, Emily Cohen, and everyone at Show Shop.
Michelle Bosch, Robin Abrams, Julie Baldauff, Maxwell Bowman, Taylor Brennan, Cynthia Cahill, Catherine Clark, Azriel Crews, Brendan Fay, Peter Gangi, Alexandra Dawn Hall, Callan Hughes, Cynthia Kennedy, Dawn Marcoccia, Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, Jordan Miller-Surratt, Riley Mulherkar, Joshua Reid, Jennifer Roberts, Christopher Vergara.
Nicholas Apps, Elizabeth Burke, Lesley Cannady, Ann Marie Lonsdale, Margaret Moll, Lisa Silverberg, Liz Ogilvie, Roy W. Backes.
* * *
My dear friends at Stanford University who hosted an invaluable residency at a critical moment in the project’s development: Jane Shaw, Wiley Hausam, and Harry Elam. Thank you for sharing your intellect, your community, and your resources with me.
Thank you Drew Faust, then president of Harvard University, for encouraging the Harvard community to attend and support the pre–New York production of the play and for the conversations that followed.
A special thank-you to Tony Taccone, Susie Medak, Diane Paulus, and Diane Borger for jumping on board for my very ambitious audience-engagement experiment, the Second Act Project. It was unwieldy at times. It was disruptive, and disruption is costly in many ways. Thank you for all of the logistics and the reorganization of your space and resources needed to pull it off.
Thank you to everyone who worked with us as a facilitator during the Second Act Project. Your willingness to ride the ambition of our civic engagement experiment, your patience, and your bravery were key to furthering the conversation about the topics of this play with thousands of audience members who saw the show in Berkeley, Baltimore, Stanford, Philadelphia, and Cambridge.
* * *
Additional workshops and residencies:
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Charles Ward and Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Bard College, Gideon Lester
The American Academy in Rome
Directors of early workshop versions of Notes from the Field: Leah C. Gardiner, Jasson Minadakis
* * *
Thanks to the Pipeline Project field research team, which included Sabrina Aviles, Edgardo Cervano-Soto, Lee Green, Julian Hamer, Pendarvis Harshaw, Brooke Haycock, Kelly Hommon, Melissa Howden, Nick Leavens, Thaddeus Logan, Deirdre McAllister, and Lori Nesbitt.
A special thanks to the staff of the Jasper County Detention Center in South Car
olina, who extended to our field research team the kind of hospitality we never would have expected in a correctional facility. I will never forget that lunch spread and the wisdom you shared with me. I now know that some who work in prisons really “walk” with those inside the walls, while others of us are so far away.
* * *
Lead support for the Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project is provided by the Ford Foundation.
Major support is provided by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Atlantic Philanthropies, a limited life foundation; the California Endowment; NoVo Foundation; Poss Family Foundation; the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation; and Open Society Foundations.
Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund, Jordan Roth and Richie Jackson, Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Steel, Suzanne Farver Advised Fund at Aspen Community Foundation, Miguel and Jacklyn Bezos, Jeremy Smith, Arison Arts Foundation, Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, Alexandra and Paul Herzan, George Lucas Family Foundation, Ellen and Bob Peck, David and Susan Rockefeller, Daryl Roth, Robert and Laura Sillerman, Sarah Peter, Michael Margitich, the John P. and Anne Welsh McNulty Foundation, Ann and Tom Friedman, Roger and Vicki Sant, Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the Crown Family, Tom Freston, Cultures of Resistance Network Foundation, Robert J. Caruso and the Kantian Foundation, Louise Grunwald, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Nancy and Morris W. Offit, the Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder Foundation, Peggy Dulany, Benjie Lasseau, the Modern Language Association of America, Marilyn Machlowitz, Jill Lafer, Laura Bachrach, Cindy Hunter, Aleim Johnson, Sharon Achinstein, and several anonymous donors.
The LIFT engagement was supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.
The Pipeline Project is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Thank you to New York University’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue for its collaboration on the Second Act Project.
Thank you to New York University for its continued support of my work: the Office of the Provost, David McLaughlin, Katherine Fleming, Diane Yu, John Sexton, Andrew Hamilton, Allyson Green, and the Tisch School of the Arts.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Photographs on the following pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 courtesy of Scott McDermott / HBO®
16Freddie Gray protest: Joe Giordano
17Protestor on car windshield: Joe Giordano
18Protestor on car windshield: JIM WATSON / AFP / Getty; still from aerial view time-lapse of Baltimore Inner Harbor: TierneyMJ / Shutterstock.com
19Friend and family of Freddie Gray: AP Images / Patrick Semansky; Freddie Gray funeral: The Washington Post / The Washington Post/Getty
20Stockton, California’s City Hall: Max Whittaker / Reuters Pictures
21Klamath River Mouth photo courtesy of The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project; photo courtesy of Taos Proctor
22Klamath River Mouth photo courtesy of The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project
23Still from video by Brandon Brooks
24Residential area of the United States: KPG_Payless / Shutterstock.com
25Still from video by Reginald Seabrooks
26Still from video by Reginald Seabrooks
27Still from video by Reginald Seabrooks
28Barbed wire prison fence: Tim Gray/Shutterstock.com; corridor: Image Source / Getty
29Samuel B. Huey Public School: Philadelphia Tribune / PHOTO/ABDUL R SULAYMAN
30Confederate flag protest: MLADEN ANTONOV / AFP / Getty
31Confederate flag (right): Jason
32Bree Newsome: Andrea Detsky / Bree Newsome Bass
33Klamath River Mouth photo courtesy of: The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project; Yurok Reservation welcome sign: Mark Miller Photos / Photolibrary / Getty
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