Anna Deavere Smith: Williams College Baccalaureate Address 2012

Anna Deavere Smith was awarded an honorary degree by Williams College during its June 2012 Commencement exercises, Named "the most exciting individual in American theatre" by Newsweek, Smith uses her skills to explore issues of community, character, and diversity in America. Two of her best-known works are the one-woman plays about racial tensions she wrote and performed: Fires in the Mirror (Obie Award winner and runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize) and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Obie Award winner and Tony Award nominee). Smith won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding one-person show two years in a row for these plays. Smith has also appeared in several films, including Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, and The American President, and she has a recurring role as the nurse manager on the Showtime series Nurse Jackie. She also played National Security Advisor Nancy McNally on NBC's The West Wing. Her plays and performances have won her widespread recognition, including a MacArthur Foundation "genius" Fellowship. Awarded an honorary degree from Williams College during the June 212 Commencement exercises, Deavere Smith's most recent book is "Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts," and her latest play is "Let Me Down Easy," which opened on Off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre in 2009 and was broadcast on PBS in January 2012. She is a tenured professor at NYU's Tish School of the Arts.