A multitude spoke up at the Third Bunche Chair Lecture on Tuesday night.
Most of those voices were channeled through Anna Deavere Smith, the playwright, actress and author known for her unique brand of theater, in which she interprets and performs the words of subjects she has interviewed.
“Nobody talks like anyone else. Everyone’s language has its own personal dignity,” Smith said, aligning her own work with Bunche’s words about the importance of recognizing and protecting individuals’ rights and dignity.
Her performance, held in the Grand Horizon Ballroom of Covel Commons, was somewhat of a departure from the past two lectures delivered in the Bunche Chair series, by Randall Robinson in 2006 and Robin D.G. Kelley in 2007.
At a reception held immediately before Smith’s lecture, Darnell Hunt, the director of the Bunche Center for African American Studies, was still unsure exactly was in store.
As he stood on the patio outside of the ballroom half an hour before the event, English Professor Richard Yarborough debriefed him on final details of how Smith was planning to set the room.
“We generally give the lecturer a lot of latitude,” Hunt said. “We don’t really know what she’s going to do ““ we’re anxious to find out.”
Though unsure of what the content and form of the lecture might be, Hunt said he was confident Smith would follow the series’ commitment to recognizing the work of Bunche, the UCLA alumnus who mediated in the Middle East, served as undersecretary general of the United Nations and was the first person of color to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Hunt said the social commentary and political bent of Smith’s work “echoes Ralph Bunche’s legacy very nicely.”
Smith, also a professor at New York University, gained critical and academic acclaim for her work “Twilight: Los Angeles,” a performance piece based on interviews with residents of Los Angeles about the civil disobedience that followed the Rodney King verdicts in 1992.
First-year students Tara Cox and Jennifer Lee said they had studied Smith in a theater class at Gunn High School in Palo Alto and hoped that Smith would perform ““ though they, too, did not know what to expect.
“I just want to know how she overcame the limits of being a female minority in the theater world. She defied them all,” Cox said.
Smith did not disappoint audience members eager for one of her trademark performances. Opening with excerpts of Bunche’s speeches, she continued on to embody a wide variety of men and women, including anthropologist Margaret Mead, author James Baldwin, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Michael Bentt, an interview subject present in the audience.
Smith said her work came from her attempts to bridge the gaps between people by absorbing their words physically, emotionally and psychologically. She also moved through the lecture audience, literally reaching out to some of them.
“One reason it’s important to reach is because, by reaching, we understand it’s not just us,” Smith said after performing the words of Young-Soon Han, a Korean woman whose shop was destroyed in the aftermath of the 1992 disturbances.
“We’re so busy and full of hate and tribalism that we forget to see the systems,” Smith said, referring to the broader problems that affect the country, as she moved into a series of testimonies from individuals affected by Hurricane Katrina and gaps in health care coverage in this country.