Compiled from dozens of interviews conducted by the author, Anna Deavere Smith's play for a solo performer Let Me Down Easy is a bracing, tender, melancholy, and triumphant exploration of death and dying.
The speakers include healthcare professionals, theologians, artists, athletes, and activists. They speak of the body as a battleground, a tool, a weapon, a joy, a burden. Smith's great gift has always been her ability to break down her subjects' defences and present them in their full, complicated beauty. Whether channeling Lance Armstrong, Lauren Hutton, Peter Gomes, or others who are not in the public eye, Smith reminds us again and again that in learning to die we learn to live.
Let Me Down Easy was premiered Off-Broadway in the Tony Kiser Theater at Second Stage Theater in October 2009.
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