She is known for her performances on popular TV series such as The West Wing and Black-ish , in movies such as Philadelphia and The Human Stain , and in stage plays and one-woman shows , on and off Broadway. In the s, Smith was credited with advancing a distinctive form of theater: She reports her story out, conducting scores of interviews, and then transforms the transcripts into dramatic art. For her play Twilight: Los Angeles, , about the Rodney King riots, she interviewed more than people, composing the script entirely out of material from those conversations.
With This Ghost of Slavery , Smith once again deploys her signature use of contemporary interviews, including with people who have been absorbed into the criminal-justice system, many of whom she has interviewed for her Pipeline Girls Project, which examines how proximity to the carceral system affects young women. She has also interviewed activists and social-justice workers, many of them associated with a nonprofit organization called Chicago CRED , which seeks to reduce gun violence and help young people ensnared in gangs or the juvenile-justice system.
But this time she has also supplemented these interviews with primary-source historical materials. She has mined 19th-century archives, transcripts, and diaries, and woven dialogue from these sources into the play. The echoes of history reverberate loudly, revealing the power of historical trauma to shape behavior in the present day.
Unless otherwise specified, any material not footnoted is invented even when drawing on historical events. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel Rattner provided extensive research assistance for this project. Anas Ali Aide-de-camp, Latitude. Carolina Nelson, a. Carl Vogel, a. Jack Ross Professor at Johns Hopkins. The Dean Johns Hopkins dean of humanities. The Provost Johns Hopkins provost. Frederick Douglass Abolitionist. Salmon Chase Chief justice of the United States, β Abraham Lincoln United States president.
