Prompt #11--Fires in the Mirror

Fires in the Mirror must be performed the way that it is written, with all scenes intact, as opposed to cutting out the first half of the play that is not strictly about the Crown Heights riots.  The play is structured so that Crown Heights is not mentioned or belabored for a very long time, and this is intentional, because the play is about identity more than it is the Crown Heights riots.  For one, we can see this in the title—the play is called “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities,” not “The Crown Heights Riots: Themes and Identities.” Anna Deveare Smith contextualizes the Crown Heights riots within the larger scope of identity, and she flavors it with the natural effects that come from her playing every single part.

The very first section of the play, with the Ntozake Shange, Lubavitcher woman, and George C. Wolfe monologues, it titled “Identity.”  Similarly, the next section is titled “Mirrors.”  Of these, only the anonymous Lubavitcher woman’s monologue is even cursorily about the Crown Heights riots.  I’m not saying this to give fodder to the belief that these monologues should be cut; I’m saying that anyone who thinks that way should reconsider the text as a whole, and not just the source material from which Anna Deveare Smith worked.  Essentially, just look at the duration of time that the script spends between the two subjects—about half of the script is explicitly about the Crown Heights riots (which, by that point, are already contextualized in the frame of identity, especially with Anna Deveare Smith’s unique style), and the other half is explicitly about identity.  The two are essentially inextricable, and it would be a loss and an insult to the rest of the script to perform only one half or the other.