Tony nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist Anna Deavere Smith will bring her solo play Notes From the Field to the small screen. The film adaptation will premiere on HBO February 24, 2018.
Smith’s play depicted accounts of students, teachers, parents, and administrators through an exploration of the school-to-prison pipeline in marginalized and under-represented communities. The piece drew from hundreds of interviews Smith had conducted while researching the topic, and featured the artist portraying myriad individuals.
The documentary-style show played an acclaimed Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theater in 2016, following earlier engagements at the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts and at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Smith, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2013, earned a Tony nomination for her play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which marked her Broadway debut in 1994; she also won her second Drama Desk for the piece. Her earlier play Fires in the Mirror, explores the intersections of Black and Jewish communities against the backdrop of the Crown Heights riot, was named a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
