Seeing Life on the Road to Death

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More About

• Lance Armstrong
• Anna Deavere Smith
• Leonard Foglia
• Lauren Hutton
• Joel Siegal

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Anna Deavere Smith is a revelation in Let Me Down Easy. She’s an accomplished actress with lead roles in West Wing and Nurse Jackie, and profoundly skilled storyteller and mimic. She spent a decade interviewing hundreds of people (a rodeo rider, a prizefighter, a preacher, a New Orleans nurse, even Lance Armstrong and Lauren Hutton) about their relationships to their bodies and spirits as they age and get closer to death. With the help of director Leonard Foglia, Smith uses her unique performance style to channel their voices verbatim with careful attention to gesture and cadence, telling a story, in her words, “about life as much as death, about a search for grace.” Close your eyes and hear more than 20 characters speaking intimately about their journeys toward the grave, including Armstrong confessing how his fear of death drives his cycling, Joel Siegal cracking jokes on his deathbed, and a Buddhist monk pondering how we go about dying and what might be next. It’s stunning, beautiful, and transcendent.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: June 16. Continues through July 10, 2011