Seeing ‘Twilight’ in a Different Light : One-Woman Show Has a Message for All of Us

As both a participant in the events of April/May, 1992, and as one of Anna Deavere Smith’s interviewees, I found it hard to understand the critique of reviewer Jan Breslauer of Smith’s play “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.”

“Not analytical,” she wrote. Didn’t she listen to the voices Smith portrayed? They spoke of racism, poverty, drugs and crime.

Take, for example, the incident on the freeway that I described in my interview. As president of the Police Commission, I was rushing (not speeding, mind you) east on the Santa Monica Freeway with my mind on one thing. I had just learned that the Rodney G. King verdicts had been announced, and I needed to determine if there was going to be any “street” reaction and just how serious it would be.

It was on the afternoon of April 29, 1992, and an African-American woman driving a fairly new black BMW passed me on the right. Her left arm was out of the driver’s window holding a hammer in what seemed to me a threatening manner, waving it back and forth. When she turned south onto the Harbor Freeway, I assumed she was heading for South-Central. That woman with the hammer said a lot--more at that point than the radio or my car phone could provide. The African-American community was going to react--not mildly. Years of anger and frustration had piled up.

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To also expect that both Smith and her interviewees should have provided solutions is just misplaced. Smith was describing, not prescribing. Her interviewees were reacting to a situation that had a serious impact on them. They were merely being asked how they saw what happened. And why expect them to have solutions if all the social scientists at Harvard, USC, UCLA and RAND can’t offer very much either? If I had solutions, I might have run for mayor.

Another of the reviewer’s complaints was that there was too much humor and laughter from the audience. In retrospect, I am reminded of the foxhole humor during World War II that was a relief for a lot of GIs. People who’ve had a bad time need the relief of humor. I was startled by the laughter when sitting in the audience listening to Smith describing how I pulled into the Parker Center garage area and ran into Chief Gates who was getting into his car to go somewhere. Thinking that he was off to some incident related to the event I asked where he was going. Dismissively, all he would say is that he had something to attend to. There was nothing at all comic or humorous in the way I had asked the question or described his response. What startled me was that the audience broke out in strong laughter. They knew he had gone off to a No-on-Prop F fund-raiser way out in Brentwood and probably saw in that action a greater concern for his own job than for the welfare of their troubled city. It is not surprising that the audience, having lived through the pain of those few days, found relief in laughter.

Finally, I had the rich experience of attending a special performance of “Twilight” given by Smith for high school students--one of four such performances. Watching those teen-agers transfixed and reacting with emotions at all levels--laughter, gasps, silence--was something to behold.

We grown-ups are too sophisticated to be emotionally demonstrative the way kids are. Afterward they engaged in dialogue in a most articulate way with the actress-playwright. For the reviewer to say that the work was “emotionally unengaging and analytically shallow” belies the experience of most others.

I later asked how much these four special performances for high schoolers cost and they turned out to be $10,000 a crack. Whoever coughed up that $40,000 for such a purpose should be congratulated and very pleased. Those kids got an education they’ll long remember.

Too bad Breslauer did not.