BAM Presents UNBOUND: Anna Deavere Smith On The Release Of NOTES FROM THE FIELD

Unbound, a book launch series with BAM and Greenlight Bookstore presents Anna Deavere Smith, playwright, actress, and activist, for the release of her book Notes from the Field, on May 21. Smith will discuss her powerful new work with Dr. Carla Shedd, associate professor of sociology and urban education at CUNY Graduate Center.

Smith's extraordinary form of documentary theater shines a light on injustices by portraying the real-life people who have experienced them. In Notes from the Field, she renders a host of figures who have lived and fought the system that pushes students of color out of the classroom and into prisons. Using their own words, culled from interviews and speeches, Smith depicts Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant, who eulogized Freddie Gray; Niya Kenny, a high school student who confronted a violent police deputy; activist Bree Newsome, who took the Confederate flag down from the South Carolina State House grounds; and many others. Shining a light on the school-to-prison pipeline, Notes from the Field is an urgent work of drama that brings together voices from the African-American community-students and teachers, counselors and congressmen, preachers and prisoners.

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, teacher, playwright, and the creator of the acclaimed On the Road series of one-woman plays, which are based on her interviews with diverse voices from communities in crisis. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama and two Obie Awards, her work has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards. Onscreen, she has appeared in many films and television shows, including Philadelphia, The West Wing, Black-ish, and Nurse Jackie. She is a university professor in the Department of Art and Public Policy at NYU, where she also directs the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue.

Dr. Carla Shedd is the associate professor of sociology and urban education at CUNY Graduate Center whose research and teaching focuses on education, criminalization and criminal justice, race and ethnicity, law, social inequality, and urban policy. She is the award-winning author of Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, which examines the symbiosis between public school systems and the criminal justice system in Chicago. Her current book project, When Protection and Punishment Collide: America's Juvenile Court System and the Carceral Continuum, explores the links between schools, neighborhoods, and juvenile justice courts in New York City.