SOURCE: "The Tangle over Twilight," in Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1994, pp. 7, 48.

[In the following excerpt, Mitchell discusses the controversy over whether Twilight should be characterized as journalism or art.]

Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman play about the riots, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, now struggling to survive on Broadway after six weeks despite rapturous reviews and standing ovations, could gain additional longevity and respect if it wins either of the two major Tony Awards for which it is nominated tonight in New York.

Since its prominent premiere [in 1993] at the Mark Taper Forum, which commissioned it, Twilight has been both hailed as a sensational theatrical event and bedeviled by disagreement in the theater community and press as to how it should be measured—whether it is truly a work of the imagination and therefore pure dramatic art, or whether it is a form of journalism as performance art and therefore something...