World Premiere run: Berkeley Repertory Theatre (2015) in a different form
Length: Full Length Play

The published version of this play is a combination of the original play, later revisions and scenes from the 2018 movie based on it. The play is somewhere between a play and a non-fiction journalistic research - the words used are the ones of real people but they are told by a single actor. I have half a mind checking the movie - I cannot imagine this actually working properly but who knows.

The play is part of a bigger project by the author - her series of plays "On the Road: A Search for American Character" had been started in the 1980s. This is the first play by her that I had ever read - and while I am not sure I want to see it, reading it actually works.

The main topic of the play is the school-to-prison pipeline in the US educational system - a topic that cannot be discussed if you do not incorporate the topics of race, mass incarceration and everything around them. Reading it in mid-2021 adds another layer to the whole thing - it made me wonder what else would the author add to this play if it was created today.

As it is, the play covers people from all walks of life - from a high school student who get arrested (for nothing) to a Native American man who finally got released from jail, from activists to judges, from a European teacher to social workers and James Baldwin, closing with the late John Lewis. It is a series of interviews without questions; real speeches and interviews (some published, some not), collected together into a narrative that looks disjointed but somehow manages to become a complete piece at the end.

The format is unconventional and I am still not sure it was the most effective one - I would have preferred a complete book, containing the same images and words but also containing some analysis. It it somehow works - it makes you stop and think and consider - and maybe as with most social commentary plays, that's what makes it powerful.

I wish that this play will read dated and irrelevant in less than a decade. Unfortunately I suspect that even decades from now, it will sound fresh and topical. And that is a shame.

Highly recommended. ( )

I appreciate the author's documentation of any issues related to our young people in this country, particularly the school to prison pipeline. However as a foster parent, I work to prevent another pipeline and that is the foster child to prison pipeline. Both these stories start with the environment that these children are growing up in, and I can tell you even when they are removed from that environment they seek it out because that is what is they know. You can call it an "adjustment disorder" or whatever label psychologists want to put on it but the kids boomerang back to poverty and violence even when they have a choice. I can't say having work in a school from a poverty stricken area that these kids are all angels. They are not. Some of them are headed to prison no matter what interventions are in place, and some of them are just mean, disrespectful kids. The ones that get hurt are the good kids that are in the line of fire. I will watch the HBO special, but I didn't find the book all that enlightening.
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Notes from the Field is essentially the script from the stage play of the same name. Anna Deavere Smith toured, interviewing numerous people about their roles in life in the USA. They include the woman who climbed the pole to tear down the South Carolina rebel flag, the girl involved in the roughing up and arrest of a classmate who refused to leave her seat, the man who taped the Freddie Gray murder, the Congressman who marched in Selma, as well as people who try to help people. Her focus is the school-to-prison pipeline the country is becoming famous for.

This book is a complement to the HBO special the play has also been made into. Anna Deavere Smith plays all the roles, speaking the storytellers’ words and assuming their personas. It expands the litany of persecution, racism, neglect and injustice in the United States today. The book is immensely moving.

It is far more moving than the play, which four of us saw at Second Stage in New York in 2016. We were underwhelmed, for all the wrong reasons, it turns out. Smith was less than convincing and authentic. She is after all, a middle aged white woman. She played black teenagers, protestors, a Congressman, a convict, whites, blacks, and a Salvadoran, and all with truly minor additions to costume. We found ourselves trying too hard to appreciate her effort. She adopted accents and cadences, mimicked their postures and attitudes, and reproduced the hand and head movements of her storytellers. We wanted to appreciate how she and the bass player who was the only other person onstage, worked with each other as the stories unfolded.

We watched all those details in an attempt to assign kudos if not genius to the effort, because it reflected a huge amount of work by Smith. But it wasn’t all that impressive. Worse, we thereby missed the impact of what the storytellers had to say through her, which was the point of it all. We left unsatisfied.

So I’ve never thought about it again, but was curious to read what I might have missed when this book was offered.

The book notes all those postures and attitudes, and recreates the cadences and linguistic styles in print, so that readers can be right there, and appreciate the storytellers for who they are, what they have to say and how they say it. To me, it is more valuable than seeing it live. Unlike the play, the book is valuable, informative and unforgettable.

David Wineberg ( )