Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

  This book is first and foremost a document of what an actress heard in Los Angeles. The performance is a reiteration of that. When I did my research in Los Angeles, I was listening with an ear that was trained to hear stories for the specific purpose of repeating them with the elements of character intact. This becomes significant because sometimes there is the expectation that inasmuch as I am doing “social dramas,” I am looking for solutions to social problems. In fact, though, I am looking at the processes of the problems. Acting is a constant process of becoming something. It is not a result, it is not an answer. It is not a solution. I am first looking for the humanness inside the problems, or the crises. The spoken word is evidence of the humanness. Perhaps the solutions come somewhere further down the road.

  I see the work as a call. I played Twilight in Los Angeles as a call to the community. I performed it at a time when the community had not yet resolved the problems. I wanted to be a part of their examination of the problems. I believe that solutions to these problems will call for the participation of large and eclectic groups of people. I also believe that we are at a stage at which we must first break the silence about race and encourage many more people to participate in the dialogue.

  One of the questions I was frequently asked when I was interviewed about Twilight was “Did you find any one voice that could speak for the entire city?” I think there is an expectation that in this diverse city, and in this diverse nation, a unifying voice would bring increased understanding and put us on the road to solutions. This expectation surprises me. There is little in culture or education that encourages the development of a unifying voice. In order to have real unity, all voices would have to first be heard or at least represented. Many of us who work in race relations do so from the point of view of our own ethnicity. This very fact inhibits our ability to hear more voices than those that are closest to us in proximity. Few people speak a language about race that is not their own. If more of us could actually speak from another point of view, like speaking another language, we could accelerate the flow of ideas.

  The boundaries of ethnicity do yield brilliant work. In some cases these boundaries provide safer places that allow us to work in atmospheres where we are supported and can support the works of others. In some cases it’s very exciting to work with like-minded people in similar fields of interest. In other cases these boundaries have been crucial to the development of identity and the only conceivable response to a popular culture and a mainstream that denied the possibility of the development of identity. On the other hand the price we pay is that few of us can really look at the story of race in its complexity and its scope. If we were able to move more frequently beyond these boundaries, we would develop multifaceted identities and we would develop a more complex language. After all, identity is in some ways a process toward character. It is not character itself. It is not fixed. Our race dialogue desperately needs this more complex language. The words of Twilight, the ex–gang member after whom I named the play, addresses this need:

  Twilight is that time of day between day and night

  limbo, I call it limbo,

  and sometimes when I take my ideas to my homeboys

  they say, well Twilight, that’s something you can’t do right now,

  that’s an idea before its time.

  So sometimes I feel as though I’m stuck in limbo

  the way the sun is stuck between night and day

  in the twilight hours.

  Nighttime to me is like a lack of sun,

  but I don’t affiliate darkness with anything negative.

  I affiliate darkness with what came first,

  because it was first,

  and relative to my complexion,

  I am a dark individual

  and with me being stuck in limbo

  I see the darkness as myself.

  And I see the light as the knowledge and the wisdom of the world, and the understanding of others.

  And I know

  that in order for me to be a full human being

  I cannot forever dwell in darkness

  I cannot forever dwell in idea

  of identifying with those like me

  and understanding only me and mine.

  Twilight’s recognition that we must reach across ethnic boundaries is simple but true.

  Production History

  Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was conceived, written, and performed by Anna Deavere Smith. It was originally produced by the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles: Gordon Davidson, artistic director/producer, and Emily Mann, director.

  It premiered on May 23, 1993, and closed on July 18, 1993. It was subsequently produced as a work in progress at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.

  Twilight’s original New York production was provided by the New York Shakespeare Festival, George C. Wolfe, producer.

  It opened at the New York Shakespeare Festival in March 1994 and was directed by George C. Wolfe.

  All material is taken from interviews conducted by Anna Deavere Smith.

  At the Mark Taper Forum, Charles Dillingham served as managing director and Robert Egan as producing director. Robert Brill designed the set; Candice Donnelly, the costumes; Allen Lee Hughes, the lighting; Lucia Hwong, the original music score; Jon Gottlieb, the sound; Jon Stolzberg of Intelewall, the multimedia design; and Merry Conway, the physical dramaturgy. Dramaturges: Elizabeth Alexander, Oskar Eustis, Dorinne Kondo, and Hector Tobar. Corey Beth Madden was associate producer; Ed De Shae, production stage manager; and Richard Hollabaugh, stage manager. Cecilia J. Pang was assistant to Anna Deavere Smith; Kishisha Jefferson, field assistant to Anna Deavere Smith; Eisa Davis, assistant to Emily Mann; Thulani Davis, workshop dramaturge; Jamie Lyons, Stanford University student intern; and Kathy Cho and Nancy Yoo, research assistants.

  At the New York Shakespeare Festival Tony Kushner was dramaturge; John Arnone designed the scenery; Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, the lighting; John Gromada, the sound. At press time, the selection of the creative team was incomplete.

  Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is part of a series of solo pieces created and performed by Anna Deavere Smith called On the Road: A Search for American Character.

  Prologue

  My Enemy

  Rudy Salas, Sr. Sculptor and painter

  (A large very warm man, with a blue shirt with the tails out and blue jeans and tennis shoes. He is at a dining-room table with a white tablecloth. There is a bank of photographs in frames on the sideboard next to the table. There is a vase of flowers on another table near the table. There are paintings of his on the wall. Nearest the table is a painting of his wife. His wife, Margaret, a woman in glasses and a long flowered dress, moves around the room. For a while she takes photo albums out of the sideboard and out of the back room, occasionally saying something. She is listening to the entire interview. He has a hearing aid in his left ear and in his right ear. He is sitting in a wooden captain’s chair, medium-sized. He moves a lot in the chair, sometimes with his feet behind the front legs, and his arms hanging over the back of the chair. He is very warm.)

  An then my

  my grandfather,

  N. Carnación,

  uh,

  was a

  gringo hater

  ’cause he had run-ins with gringos

  when he was riding.

  He had been a rebel,

  so see there was another twist—

  he had rode with Villa and those people and he remembers when he

  fought the gringos when they went into Chihuahua

  Pershing went in there to chase Villa and all that?

  So I grew up with all this rich stuff at home,

  (Three quick hits on the table and a double sweep)

  and then at school,

  first grade, they started telling me

  I was inferior

  because I was a Mexican,

  and that’s where

  (He hits the table several times, taps,
twenty-three taps until line “the enemy” and then on “nice white teachers” his hand sweeps the table)

  I realized I had an enemy

  and that enemy was those nice white teachers.

  I wonder what is it,

  why

  did I have this madness

  that I understood this?

  It’s not an enemy I hated.

  It’s not a hate thing,

  the insanity that I carried with me started when I took the beating

  from the police.

  Okay, that’s where the insanity came in.

  In forty-two,

  when I was in my teens

  running around as a zoot-suiter,

  one night the cop really tore me up bad.

  I turned around I threw a punch at one of ’em.

  I didn’t hit him hard,

  but that sealed my doom.

  They took me to a room

  and they locked the door behind me

  and there was four guys, four cops there

  kicking me in the head.

  As a result of the kicks in the head they fractured my eardrum,

  and, uh,

  I couldn’t hear

  on both ears.

  I was deaf,

  worse than I am now.

  (He pulls out one of his hearing aids)

  So

  from that day on

  I, I had a hate in me,

  even now.

  I don’t like to hate, never do,

  the way that my Uncle Abraham told me that to hate is to waste

  energy and you mess with man upstairs,

  but I had an insane hatred

  for white policemen.

  I used to read the paper—it’s awful, it’s awful—

  if I would read about a cop shot down in the street,

  killed,

  dead,

  a human being!

  a fellow human being?

  I say,

  “So, you know, you know, so what,

  maybe he’s one of those motherfuckers that,

  y’know …”

  and I still get things like that.

  I know this society.

  I’m hooked on the news at six and the newspapers

  and every morning I read injustices

  and poor Margaret has to put up with me

  ’cause I rave and I rant and I walk around here.

  I gotta eat breakfast over there,

  I can’t eat breakfast with her

  ’cause I tell her,

  “These goddamned peckerwoods,”

  so she puts me out there.

  But I don’t hate rednecks and peckerwoods,

  and when I moved in here

  it’s all peckerwoods.

  I had to put out my big Mexican flag out of my van.

  Oh heck,

  I told my kids a long time ago, fears that I had—

  not physically inferior,

  I grew up with the idea that

  whites are

  physically …

  I still got that—see, that’s a prejudice,

  that whites are physically afraid of, of

  minorities,

  people of color, Blacks and Mexicans.

  It’s a physical thing,

  it’s a mental, mental thing that they’re physically afraid.

  I, I can still see it,

  I can still see it,

  and, and,

  and, uh-uh,

  I love to see it.

  It’s just how I am.

  I can’t help myself when I see

  the right

  person

  do the right thing,

  if I see the right white guy

  or the right

  Mexican walk down the mall

  (He makes a face and laughs)

  and the whites,

  you know, they go into their thing already.

  I don’t like to see a gang of cholos

  walking around,

  you know, threatening people

  with their ugly faces—

  that’s something else.

  Well, they put on the mask—you ever notice that?—

  it’s sort of a mask,

  it’s, uh …

  (He stands up and mimics them)

  You know how they stand in your face with the ugly faces.

  Damn, man,

  I’d like to kill their dads.

  That’s what I always think about.

  I always dream of that—

  break into their houses and drag their dads out.

  Well, you see, that relieves me.

  But, you see, I still have that prejudice against whites.

  I’m not a racist!

  But I have white friends, though,

  but I don’t even see them as whites!

  I don’t even see them as whites! And my boys,

  I had a lot of anxiety, I told

  them, “Cooperate, man,

  something happens,

  your hands …

  (Puts his hands up)

  let them call you what they want,

  be sure tell me who they are.”

  But they never told me.

  Stephen was in Stanford!

  Came home one weekend

  to sing

  with the band.

  One night

  cop pulled a gun at his head.

  It drove me crazy—

  it’s still going on,

  it’s still going on.

  How you think

  a

  father feels,

  stuff that happened to me

  fifty years

  ago

  happened to my son?

  Man!

  They didn’t tell me right away,

  because it would make me sick,

  it would make me sick,

  and, uh,

  my oldest son, Rudy.

  Didn’t they,

  Margaret,

  insult him one time and they pulled you over …

  the Alhambra cops, they pulled you over

  and, aww, man …

  My enemy.

  The Territory

  These Curious People

  Stanley K. Sheinbaum Former president, Los Angeles Police Commission

  (A beautiful house in Brentwood. There is art on all the walls. The art has a real spirit to it. These are the paintings by his wife, Betty Sheinbaum. There is a large living room, an office off the living room which you can see. It is mostly made of wood, lots of papers and books. The office of a writer. There are glass windows that look out on a pool, a garden, a view. Behind us is a kitchen where his wife, Betty, was, but eventually she leaves. Stanley is sitting at a round wooden table with a cup of coffee. He is in a striped shirt and khaki pants and loafers. He has a beard. He is tall, and about seventy-three years old. He seems gruff, but when he smiles or laughs, his face lights up the room. It’s very unusual. He has the smile and laugh of a highly spiritual, joyous, old woman, like a grandmother who has really been around. There is a bird inside the house which occasionally chirps.)

  Very

  interesting thing happened.

  Like a week and a half (very thoughtfully trying to remember),

  Maxine Waters calls me up—

  You know who she is?

  We’re very good friends—

  she calls me up and she says,

  “Ya gotta come with me.

  I been going down to Nickerson Gardens

  and

  the cops come in and break up these gang meetings

  and these are gang meetings

  for the purpose of truces.”

  (I was momentarily distracted)

  Pay attention.

  The next Saturday afternoon,

  the next day even,

  I go down with her,

  uh,

  to,

  uh,

  Nickerson Gardens

  (an abrupt stop, and
>
  second pause, as if he’s forgotten something for a moment)

  and I see a whole bunch of, uh,

  police car

  sirens and the lights

  and I say, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  So sure enough, I pull in there

  (three-second pause).

  We pull in there

  and, uh,

  I ask a cop what’s going on

  and he says,

  “Well, we got a call for help.”

  There’s a gang meeting over there.

  There’s a community park there and there’s a gym

  and I go down to the …

  we go down to the gang meeting

  and half of ’em

  outside of the

  gym

  and half of ’em

  inside

  and here’s about a hundred cops lined up over here

  and about another hundred

  over here

  and, uh,

  I go

  into the, uh,

  into the group of gang members who were outside.

  Even Maxine got scared by this.

  I gotta tell you I was brought up in Harlem.

  I just have a feel for what I can do and what I can’t do

  and I did that.

  And I spent about

  two, two

  hours talkin’ to these guys.

  Some of these guys were ready to kill me.

  (A bird chirps loudly; maybe this is a parakeet or an inside bird)

  I’m the police commissioner

  and therefore a cop

  and therefore all the things that went along with being a cop.

  It was a very interesting experience, God knows.

  One guy who was really disheveled and disjointed

  and disfigured

  opens up his whole body

  and it’s clear he’s been shot across …

  not in that … not in that day,

  months or years before,

  and, you know,

  these guys have been through the wars down there

  and,

  you know, I hung around long enough that I could talk to them,

  get some insights.

  But the cops were mad,

  they were really mad

  that I would go talk to them

  and not talk to them

  and I knew that if I went and talked to them

  I’d have bigger problems here

  But I also knew as I was doing this,