Well, first thing is that it is, it is the actual making of language. The actual, the ‘in the present’ moment sound that the person is making and how that he is making that sound. That is where identity lives. I think. I do not think it really lives in, like if you took my what I am saying here and you transcribe it. I do not think that is Anna Deavere Smith.
But I think that a series of sounds and movements are Anna Deavere Smith. In other words, the output product of that. And your language is close to your breathing, it is close to your heart. And usually what I like to listen for is the time when somebody says something in an unusual way, you should talk to people for about an hour. And for example, if they’re constantly using upward reflections, you know, you always speaking up, you know, everything they say goes up which younger people tend to do. As I heard, a very accomplish judge say when asked what he could give to young women lawyers we are trying to make it is don’t do that, because what is it say to the judge if you come forward and say “Your Honor, my client is not guilty?” it sounds like a question right?
So, someone is talking all like that, what I’m going to listen for is the time that they do not do that and that is what I would start to study as with characterizing them. Whereas I think the professional mimic or the impressionist, we pick the thing they do the most because that is what an audience could then identifies that person. So, an impressionist doing George Bush is going to try to find the gestures and the, you know, the intimations that he keep using over and over again. But if I were to study him and I haven’t really I do look for what he did something that was not what we’ve seen.
I went to Washington and I reviewed 520 people or more. And I was surprised that I would say, of those people the person, Clinton was probably among the five who had the most musicality in their language. In other words in Washington, I would say, you begin the find lesson less expression than you find in other places because people are very careful about what they say. There going to be judge for what they say. They could say the wrong thing or say it the wrong way and never live it down.
So, they have as someone who said very eloquently what was Thomas Jefferson had which is that Thomas Jefferson can never be found in verbal undress. And so, that kind of verbal dressing makes it harder to find music in the language. I am trying to find the time the people start to sing, I call it singing, not actually, you know—la la la, but they are really started to open up rhythmically.
More than again, what is the text? It is more about this singing as I call it. And I was surprise to the extent to what Clinton sang. And the other thing about Clinton that I enjoyed was that he brought truth to something that a linguist that actually told me many years ago when I told her what I was trying to do, that is to say, a form of getting people to sing. He had said to me, “Well I’m going to give you three questions that can ensure that that will happen in a course of an hour if you only have hour.” I talk to people and the three questions were “Have you ever come close to death? Do you know the circumstances of your birth? And have you ever been accused of something that you did not do?
Now when I first started my whole process which I called On The Road To Search For American Character, all of my plays are part of that series, I originally just sat with people who I met on the streets of New York and talk to them about whatever, they you know, if they sold milk I talk about selling milk or stick bond in the street in one case, or being a lifeguard. I have said, I’ve talk to him about what they did and then somewhere in the review, I’d ask those three questions. And low in behold, every time I did, people would start this singing that I am talking about.
So, when I finally got an interview with President Clinton which wasn’t easy and was told that I would have ten minutes alone with him in the office. I knew that I had to have a question t
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