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1、Anna Deavere Smiths play Fires in the Mirror is a part of her project On the Road: A Search for the American Character. It is a series of monologues excerpted from interviews. Fires in the Mirror chronicles a civic disturbance in the New York neighborhood of Crown Heights in August 1991. In that rac
2、ially divided neighborhood, a car driven by a Jewish man veered onto a sidewalk and killed a 7-year-old Caribbean-American boy who was learning to ride a bicycle. The accident and the response of emergency medical personnel sparked protests during which a Jewish student visiting from Australia was s
3、tabbed on the street by a group of black youths. Days of rioting ensued, exposing to national scrutiny the depth of the racial divisions in Crown Heights. The rioting produced 190 injuries, 129 arrests, and an estimated one million dollars in property damage.1Smith interviewed leading politicians, w
4、riters, musicians, religious leaders, and intellectuals together with residents of Crown Heights and participants in the disturbances to craft the monologues of her play. Through the words of 26 different people, in 29 monologues, Smith explores how and why people signal their identities, how they p
5、erceive and respond to people different from themselves, and how barriers between groups can be breached. My sense is that American character lives not in one place or the other, Smith writes in her introduction to the play, but in the gaps between the places, and in our struggle to be together in o
6、ur differences. The title of the play suggests a vision of art as a site of reflection where the passions and fires of a specific moment can be examined from a new angle, contemplated, and better understood.2The play is a series of monologues attained from interviews Anna Deavere Smith did with peop
7、le involved in the Crown Heights crisis. Each one is titled with the persons name as well as a key phrase from each interview, which tries to sum up what that person was trying to say or an important aspect of their monologue. There are a total of 29 monologues in Fires in the Mirror and each one fo
8、cuses on a different characters opinion and point of view of the events and issues surrounding the crisis. Plot, as defined by David Rush in A Student Guide to Play Analysis, is “the deliberate selection and arrangement of the incidents that the playwright presents” (35). Throughout Fires in the Mir
9、ror, every monologue is referring to the same crisis and incidents surrounding, and while they do each have something in common, they are uniquely different. Fires in the Mirror does not follow the typical seven parts of a well-made play. The seven parts include: a state of equilibrium, an inciting
10、incident, a point of attack, the rising action, the climax, a resolution, and finally a new state of equilibrium. Instead, Fires in the Mirror is a collection of individual monologues, brought together by Anna Deavere Smith. And while there is no linear plot with developing characters throughout its
11、 entirety, there is some logic to how Smith lays out and clumps together the monologues.2Character guideeditWithin Fires in the Mirror, there are a total of 26 real life characters. One character appears in solo in each monologue, with two characters, The Reverend Al Sharpton and Letty Cottin Pogreb
12、in, appearing in two monologues each.The character are as follows:Ntozake Shange: 42-45 year old African-American playwright, poet, novelist.Anonymous Lubavitcher Woman: White mid-thirties preschool teacher.George C. Wolfe: African-American playwright and was the current director/producer of the New
13、 York Shakespeare Festival. (served 1993-2004)Aaron M. Bernstein: man in his fifties. Physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Anonymous Girl: A junior high, teen-age black girl of Haitian descent. Lives in Brooklyn. (near Crown Heights)The Reverend Al Sharpton: Well-known African-American
14、 New York activist and minister.Rivkah Siegal: Lubavitcher women. Graphic designer. Age unspecified.Angela Davis: African American woman in her late 40s. Author, orator, activist and scholar. Was currently a Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa
15、Cruz.Monique Big Mo Matthews: African American Los Angeles rapper.Leonard Jeffries: African American Professor of African American Studies at City University of New York. Was the former head of the department.Letty Cottin Pogrebin: White author and founding editor of Ms. Magazine. Of Jewish descent
16、and in her fifties.Minister Conrad Mohammed: African American minister of New York who associates himself with Nation of Islam (presently Baptist). The minister for the Honorable Louis Farrakhan.Robert F. Sherman: Director and Mayor of the City of New Yorks Increase the Peace Corps.Rabbi Joseph Spielman: Spokesperson in the Luabvitch community.Reverend Canon Doctor Heron Sam: Pastor at St. Marks Crown He
