VIDEO: Anna Deavere Smith Recalls the First Reading of TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992 at Signature Theatre

watch as Signature Theatre Residency 1 playwright Anna Deavere Smith speaks to her work at Signature's first play reading for Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and joins Michael Benjamin Washington, from Signature's 2019 production of Smith's Fires in the Mirror), to evoke Ntozake Shange's poetic words about identity.

The acclaimed one-woman show, later directed by George C. Wolfe on Broadway, Smith gives voice to 40 real-life "characters," from a Korean grocer to a Hollywood agent and a juror. Not "mimicry" in the traditional sense, her performance is an account of what and how these people spoke to her in hundreds of interviews. The New York Times has called Smith "the ultimate impressionist - she does people's souls."

Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles played around the U.S. and on Broadway. It received two Tony nominations, an Obie, Drama Desk Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle's Special Citation and numerous other honors.

Signature Theatre celebrates playwrights and gives them an artistic home. Signature makes an extended commitment to a playwright's body of work, producing several plays by each resident writer and delivering an intimate and immersive journey into the playwright's singular vision. In 2014 Signature became the first New York City company to receive the Regional Theater Tony Award.