Anna Deavere Smith

Is there any great advice that you've gotten from like a book or a movie or song or some work of art?

There's a book called Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith.

And I think it is like the best, most practical advice for artists about how to build a career and how to think about like improving and building a body of work, but also connecting with other people and thinking about money.

One tidbit is that like, as you are making your work, don't think about it as each piece being like one perfect polished diamond, but instead think about it as a process.

We'll discuss his ongoing project, Connect Effect, which helps groups of people from all backgrounds quickly engage in meaningful conversation.

But first, you'll hear my 2023 conversation with playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith.

Her play, This

Ghost of Slavery, was commissioned by The Atlantic Magazine and can be read on its website.

At the time of our conversation, her landmark play, Twilight, about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, was on stage at LA's

Mark Taper Forum.

Anna Deavere Smith is a much honored artist who I am honored to call my friend.

She has starred on screens both big and small in For the People, Nurse Jackie, The West Wing, and The American President.

talking about how there are levels to confidence.

And my response, borrowed from Anna Deavere Smith's wonderful book, Letters to a Young Artist, what we can do when we're at one of the lower levels of confidence.

Welcome to Walk the Pod.

Morning, Rach.

And I certainly recognise that.

Different levels of confidence with different things.

And I wanted to bring you Anna Deavere Smith's thoughts on confidence because in her book Letters to a Young Artist, which I think is based on Raina Maria Rilke's collection of letters to a young artist.

Rilke wrote real letters to a real young artist.

And they're often from serendipitous encounters, synchronous encounters.

Like I was just in touch with Anna Deavere Smith.

That is a serendipitous encounter.

How I started working for her in 1993.

So one of the things I do going back to Amy Richards.

So Amy and I have a beautiful story, which is that we were blind friended when she was working and remained very close with Gloria Steinem.

And I was working for Anna Deavere Smith.

We were assisting both of them and they said they wanted their assistants to meet.

You can find A.M. in our archives, featured in the Grit TV and Streb live Risky Talking series.

Speaking alongside Anna Deavere Smith, it's quite a treat.

It's at lauraflanders.org.

While you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter for information on our web extras and the upcoming podcast release of the full uncut conversation from each week's show.

Um, Alan Alda, uh, and the Center for Communicating Science, uh, at Stony Brook University is thinking about innovative ways to communicate about public to a wide audien- uh, about science to a wide audience.

Uh, and a, a theater artist, Anna Deavere Smith, was able to, uh, get significant support for first a residency at Yale Medical School, where she was able to develop an original piece about healthcare and medicine, uh, but then also going around the country to find support for performance of this work.

Now, in our own experience, we've, uh, we've already had the opportunity to develop on the success of The Edge of the Map, and as, as, uh, Lauren mentioned, we're already in the works using the $5,000 we were awarded from being named finalists for the President's Challenge to develop a pr- a collaboration this summer with the Program for Narrative Medicine at Columbia Medical School to take the student artists, uh, the student actors from Harvard to New York to produce, uh, and perform a pr- a workshop and then production of The Edge of the Map.

Now, uh, the other side of funding is we also think, uh, that we can develop a diversified, uh, funding sources, uh, for the kind of project that we have in mind.

Mm-hmm

... like Sarah Jones and Charlayne Woodard and Anna Deavere Smith and-

Yeah

... you know, and Elijah Son.