Berkeley Repertory Theatre is proud to present Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, The California Chapter, a special presentation created, written, and performed by playwright, actor, and educator Anna Deavere Smith. Directed by Obie Award-winner Leah C. Gardiner, this limited engagement opens Saturday, July 11 and runs through Sunday, August 2, 2015 in the Roda Theatre. Individual tickets start at $50 and are currently on sale to the general public. Tickets can be purchased by phone at (510) 647-2949 or online at berkeleyrep.org.
Smith garnered a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2012 and a MacArthur Award for her incisive and astounding theatrical investigations – from racial tension (Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992) to the deficiencies in our health care system in Let Me Down Easy. Now she turns her attention to the school-to-prison pipeline, which, by pushing children out of the classroom into the criminal justice system, has created a lost generation of youth from poor communities. In act one, Smith performs striking portraits culled from interviews she conducted with nearly 150 individuals in Northern California and elsewhere in the nation affected by the pipeline’s devastating policies – capturing the dynamics of a rapidly shifting social issue through her trademark performance technique. She will be joined by Bay Area favorite, jazz musician Marcus Shelby.
In act two, Smith invites the audience to engage in dynamic conversations and be active agents to help dissolve the school-to-prison pipeline and inequities in the education system. With the compelling and inspiring Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, The California Chapter, Smith believes that we all have the imagination, the wit, and the heart to make a difference.
“I’m pleased to present Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, The California Chapter at Berkeley Rep,” says Smith. “This is my coming home project. By that I mean that I come from teachers who in my generation gave their lives to changing the lives of young Baltimoreans through belief in the potential of public education. I feel that the Bay Area is the perfect place for conversations about the school-to-prison pipeline to start and possibly for solutions to emerge. I’ve had a long history with Berkeley Rep and the Bay Area where I have presented my work since the early 1980s.”
Smith continues, “There’s a lot of research being conducted and has been done about the relationship of early suspensions and how that perpetuates a cycle of incarceration. Though the focus of fixing racial inequity is currently focused on problems with urban policemen, as President Obama cautioned us, in the midst of riots in Baltimore, the problem is broader and deeper than that. I believe that we have a chance to reimagine and recreate a new war on poverty. Education is a crucial part of that. Through this special presentation I hope that we can build a model for art to be in direct connection to advocacy. We can bring people forward to ask not just what they think, but what they can do. I hope this process will help us understand more about our children, our teachers, our judges, and our criminal justice system.”
To cultivate participation in the dialogue by as many voices as possible, Berkeley Rep is offering a wide array of ticket discounts including:
· 1,000 free community tickets are available by application to nonprofit, and government organizations serving populations impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline and indviduals for whom cost would be a barrier; details available at http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1415/9293.asp#tabbed-