I see and sense a lot of people scrambling around me, struggling under the weight of fear and chaos and hate directed at vulnerable communities. It feels like continual releases of tear gas are causing people to sputter and gasp for breath and struggle for clarity about what to reach for to feel safe and, better yet, to find some positive form of resistance. 

After participating as an audience member for Portland Playhouse’s current production of Notes from the Field, I was struck by what a well-timed gift this production is. Here is something you can do:  Spend three hours in the former church that now holds Portland Playhouse’s stage, and bear witness. Listen to the perspective and experiences of educators, activists, people who have been criminalized and impacted by the carceral state, and political and spiritual leaders occupying a variety of intersections of the education system and the criminal legal system, all embodied by one generous artist. Ground your fears and anxieties and confusion in the larger context their stories illuminate. Listen and absorb their stories with empathy. Glimpse moments of hope and courage and examples of people who have done what they could see to do even when it felt like no one cared and there was no hope in sight. If you can be changed, this production will change you.

The play is the work of the great Anna Deavere Smith, an actress, educator, and theater-maker who has created several works out of conversations with a variety of folks whose lives intersect around a particular theme. Notes from the Field is her latest such effort and, like her other works, is based on hours spent in conversation with hundreds of people with connections to what we have come to call the school-to-prison pipeline. 

Smith’s creative process is important; the conversations that ground this work positioned her as a listener seeking wisdom from all quarters, not only those commonly identified as possessing expertise worth seeking out. The finished play selects from among those voices to create a one-woman show with many characters; the lines of the play’s one actor — in this case, Ramona Lisa Alexander — consist purely of what these real people have expressed.

There is a filmed version of the play that you can stream starring Anna Deavere Smith herself, and I expect it is very good.  But there is nothing like being in the theater and sharing physical space — indeed, specifically this physical space inside a former church that served Portland’s Black community — with an actor doing this work of embodiment. For one performer to channel all of these voices — enacting empathy for all these perspectives — is a monumental lift theatrically and also spiritually. So much pain and struggle and courage and vulnerability contained within a span of less than three hours; it shook me, and I was only listening. The work of embodiment is an even deeper act of solidarity.

But to listen is the least that someone could ask of me, especially given the energy of the offering, not only by Alexander (who is excellent) but by the artists who lift up this work with her, including director Jackie Davis; musician Kennedy Verrett and Playhouse Artistic Director Brian Weaver, who provide music and other support on stage; and a design team whose care is evident in the show’s many and complex transitions. 

Much of the focus is events of about a decade ago: We hear from the man who filmed the arrest of Freddie Gray, who died under very questionable circumstances while in police custody, and from a man who protested those events. One of the most impactful monologues re-creates a sermon offered at memorial services for Gray, in which the pastor acknowledges the families of others who have died in police custody and expresses anguish and a call to action. 

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We hear from people who experienced constant discipline at school and harm at the hands of police and also in jail or prison, and are offered a sense of aspects of their experience that have presumably gone unheard. We hear from several educators, include one in Finland reacting to film of an incident in which a girl is tackled by an officer for refusing to turn over her cellphone. 

One school counselor speaks at length of the impossible circumstances she encounters working with traumatized children, and of a particular incident that occurred on her very first day. Bree Newsome movingly describes her decision to take down the Confederate flag in Charleston, South Carolina, how she prepared, and her perspective on the experience. Lawyer and activist Bryan Stephenson speaks of some of his agonizing work on behalf of a man on Death Row and of his own brokenness, recounting a childhood story that is especially revealing and painful.

Listening to these stories had a profound effect on me. It reminded me that the things we are seeing now are not new; that poverty and violence and racism have been brutally impacting people in this country long before now, often drawing little notice and concern. And in the face of such oppression, people have found ways to respond that are powerful, even when unseen and uncelebrated. They have reached beyond their resources to respond with love and generosity and courage. 

I connected with a sense that the struggle that currently engages us is the continuation of an ongoing struggle, and that we can and must join in the good work of many others who have managed to bring light into the darkest of spaces even with no assurance of the impact they hope for. 

The impact of such actions, as depicted here, is undeniable. In the context revealed in this play, with such good examples for inspiration, I can hardly do otherwise.

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Notes from the Field continues through March 30 at Portland Playhouse, 602 N.E. Prescott St., Portland. Find ticket, schedule, and production information here.

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