Anna Deavere Smith, recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Artist Award and Keynote Speaker at the New York 2009 ISPA Congress, Transformation: Art as an Agent of Change.  View other ISPA Award winners.

Nominating Statement | “It is an honor to celebrate an artist that so deftly interweaves social observation and commentary within her body of theatrical work.”

Playwright, actor and professor Anna Deavere Smith, hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theatre,” uses her singular brand of theatre to explore issues of community, character and diversity in America.  She was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” Fellowship for creating “a new form of theatre — a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate reverie.”

Smith played National Security Advisor Nancy McNally on NBC’s The West Wing and has appeared in such films as Philadelphia and The American President.  She is perhaps best known as the author and performer of two one-woman plays about racial tensions in America — Fires in the Mirror (Obie Award-winner and runner-up for the Pulitzer) and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Obie-winner and Tony Award nominee).  Interviewing subjects from all walks of life, Smith recreates their words in performance, transforming herself into an astonishing number of characters.

A tenured professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Smith founded the Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue at Harvard (now at NYU).  Her latest book is Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts.  Her most recent play, Let Me Down Easy, explores the resilience and vulnerability of the human body.