We all have seen the speed limit signs seeking to encourage us to go no more than 55 miles per hour. Of course we all speed past that governmental limit, tempting fate, whizzing here and there cruising down the high way of life, seeing in blurs our fellow law breakers and sojourners approaching our multiple time sensitive destinations.
Let Me Down Easy written and performed by Anna Devere Smith and directed by Stephen Wadsworth is performed with lightning speed, lights up your mind , jars your senses, grates your hearing, tempts you to apply brakelights, creates a cascade of contradictory thoughts and emotions competing for attention which are swept aside by another avalanche of performance wordbites and soundbites and drama bites, devouring your attention span as you drive your space/time/body down the highway of life , seated but moving through space , much faster than 55 miles per hour.

One person on a stage, evoking the particulate yet ever expanding universe , a volcano of life and death, ying and yang, a prism of rainbows penetrating your soul.
What is this play about, only the witness participant can say, but the story of life is not thematic, it is holistic and mysterious, beckoning , demanding and teasing with waking dreams of rapture.

Anna Deavere Smith's newest work in progress. "Let Me Down Easy" — a play about the resilience and fragility of the human body — is the latest installment in Ms. Smith's ongoing series of one woman shows, On The Road: A Search For American Character.

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, and author, who has created a unique form of social theater, described as “a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie." Looking at controversial events from multiple points of view, Ms. Smith's plays combine the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through her performance. She typically conducts hundreds of interviews while creating a play, then using verbatim excerpts of the interviews, she performs dozens of voices in the course of an evening. The New York Times said of her performances, “[she is] the ultimate impressionist: she does people's souls.”