Delivering word-for-word impressions from a diverse set of Americans on their health care experiences, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith delivered “Health Care: The Human Story” for the 2014 Gardner Lecture, produced by the Tanner Humanities Center.
“[Smith] draws from the numerous interviews she’s done to really paint a picture of what it’s like going through the health care system in this day and age,” said Josh Elstein, a programming and marketing associate for the Center.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Smith traveled across the country with a tape recorder, collecting numerous interviews of people for her one-woman play, “Let Me Down Easy.” Those personal interviews are what led nearly 1,000 audience members at Kingsbury Hall to experience the raw stories of people who are sick, treating the sick or facing death.
Among Smith’s impersonations was a mother whose daughter was told by doctors and nurses to “come back another day” after they failed to perform
a successful dialysis and wrapped her in sheets to stop the bleeding, then sent her
home in a cab.
Another impersonation was of a woman who had to lie about her profession in order to give health care providers an incentive to locate her “lost files.”
She also told the story of a young physician in New Orleans who witnessed her poor, racially discriminated-against patients ignored in rescue and relocation efforts during Hurricane Katrina because they attended to the wealthy areas first.
“The human story requires people who have extraordinary compassion,” Smith said. “But compassion is not necessarily a soft thing.”
Trudy Howell, who was running an South African orphanage for children with AIDS at the time Smith recorded her interview, described the uneasy process of telling children they are sick and dying. Howell told Smith never to leave them in the dark. Smith takes stories such as Howell’s to give her performance a sense of ambition. She uses it to inspire her audience to make a change.
“She forces you to pay attention,” said Parker Scott Mortensen, a senior in English. “To see her do it in person is like a gift, almost — I loved it. I’m a huge fan of hers.”
Smith said at the end of her performance that nobody is completely satisfied with the current health care system.
She also said she could not have imagined some of the negative experiences of her subjects before hearing their stories. And although Obamacare is one attempt to fix the national problems in health care, Smith said it is not perfect.
“I put a lot of hope and a lot of faith in it. With anything, it takes time to [work] out the kinks,” Smith said. Smith was applauded with a standing
ovation from many emotional people at the conclusion of her lecture.