Fiero is an experienced actor and a professor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In this essay he discusses Smith's skill as a performer of her own material and its role in the effectiveness of her play.

On January 27, 1997, at the New York Town Hall, Anna Deavere Smith moderated a debate between playwright August Wilson and theater pundit Robert Brustein over Wilson's position that black American playwrights should work within a theater exclusively devoted to black culture. Wilson had taken particular umbrage with the practice of "color-blind-casting," especially as it pertains to casting black actors in "white" plays. According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in Wilson's view, "for a black actor to walk the stage of Western drama was to collaborate with the culture of racism," to demean, and to rob the actor of his or her true and distinct identity.

Whether or not Wilson is in...