Anna Deavere Smith and Amanda Ripley Set for Live-Streamed, Post-Show Talk at NOTES FROM THE FIELD

Second Stage Theatre will host a special post-performance conversation between Anna Deavere Smith and The Atlantic journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Amanda Ripley, one of the interview subjects Ms. Smith portrays in her acclaimed new work, NOTES FROM THE FIELD. The event will take place onstage immediately following the performance on Tuesday, November 15 and all audience members are invited to stay.

The conversation will also be live-streamed on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AnnaDeavereSmith and will start at approximately 9:20pm EST.

Ms. Ripley wrote the November 2016 Atlantic article, How America Outlawed Adolescence, which explores the history of South Carolina's "disturbing schools' law and chronicles the arrest of two high school students, Shakara and Niya, under that law. Both Ms. Ripley and Niya are brought to life by Ms. Smith in NOTES FROM THE FIELD.

NOTES FROM THE FIELD, the latest work created, written and performed by groundbreaking theatre artist Anna Deavere Smith with music composed and performed by Marcus Shelby and directed by Leonard Foglia, opened to rave reviews on November 2, 2016 at the Tony Kiser Theatre (305 West 43rd Street). The critically acclaimed production has been extended to Sunday, December 18th.

One of the most hailed and provocative theatre artists of our time, Anna Deavere Smith, leads a new installation of powerful first-person storytelling in NOTES FROM THE FIELD. Urgent and inspiring, it depicts the personal accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in America's school-to-prison pipeline, as they experience in their wider communities the inequities of poverty, lack of opportunity, and over-aggressive policing. Investigating a justice system that pushes minors from poor communities out of the classroom and into incarceration, NOTES FROM THE FIELD shines a light on a lost generation of American youth. Drawn from interviews with more than 250 people living and working within a challenged system, Anna Deavere Smith continues her mastery of the documentary solo performance by stimulating awareness and ultimately, change for the better.

Anna Deavere Smith (Creator/Writer/Performer). Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright and returns to Second Stage Theatre following the 2009 New York premiere of her one-person show, Let Me Down Easy, focused on health care in the U.S. She is said to have created a new form of theatre. She has created more than 18 one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews, most of which deal with social issues. Twilight: Los Angeles, about the Los Angeles race riots of 1992, was performed around the country and on Broadway. Three of her plays have been broadcast on American Playhouse and Great Performances (PBS). In popular culture you have seen her in "Nurse Jackie," "Black-ish," "Madame Secretary," "The West Wing," The American President, Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, others. Books include Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines. She is founder and director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University. Recently she was named the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The lecture, established in 1972, is the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Prizes include the National Humanities Medal presented by President Obama, a MacArthur fellowship, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, two Tony nominations, and two Obies. She was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her play Fires in the Mirror. She has received several honorary degrees, among them from Yale University, Juilliard, the University of Pennsylvania, Spelman, Williams, Northwestern, and Radcliffe. She serves on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art, the Aspen Institute, the American Museum of Natural History, and Grace Cathedral-San Francisco. She is a University Professor at New York University.

AMANDA RIPLEY is a writer and a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She is the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller. Her first book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why, was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary. In her books and magazine writing, Amanda explores the gap between public policy and human behavior. For Time and The Atlantic, she has written cover stories on the primacy of sports in American high schools, the college of the future and the science of motivating children. She has visited schools on four continents and interviewed hundreds of kids, teachers and parents. Amanda's work has also appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London. Her work has helped Time Magazine win two National Magazine Awards. To discuss her writing, Amanda has appeared on ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX News and NPR. She has spoken at the Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as conferences on leadership, public policy and education. Before joining Time as a writer in 2000, Amanda covered the D.C. courts for Washington City Paper and Capitol Hill for Congressional Quarterly. She graduated from Cornell University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Under the artistic direction of Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theatre produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America's best Contemporary Theatre, including 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis; 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes; Dear Evan Hansen by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson;The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown; Dogfight by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Peter Duchan; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; Trust and Lonely, I'm Not by Paul Weitz; The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; The25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; Jitney by August Wilson; Jar the Floor by Cheryl L. West; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Crowns by ReGina Taylor; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants by Ricky Jay; Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller;Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; and Tiny Alice by Edward Albee.

The company's more than 130 citations include the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley, Next to Normal) and Best Score (Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, Next to Normal); the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed); the 2005 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee); the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses); the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 29 Obie Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, three Clarence Derwent Awards, 13 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 17 Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Critics Circle Award and 23 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched "Second Stage Theatre Uptown" series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

In 2015 Second Stage Theatre purchased the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street. With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicatedexclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions. The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city's Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan. Second Stage Theatre has enlisted David Rockwell and The Rockwell Group to make renovations and updates to the 103 year old landmark building. They will begin renovations on the theatre in 2016 and plans for its first Broadway production to be staged in the Hayes during the 2017-18 season.