Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy Headed for Second Stage

Anna Deavere Smith will premiere her newest solo show, Let Me Down Easy, at Second Stage beginning September 15, according to The New York Times. The piece, to be directed by Leonard Foglia, centers on health care in America and will include Smith’s portrayal of Lance Armstrong and various doctors and patients she interviewed around the country.

Smith’s move to Second Stage represents a break with the Public Theater, which had presented previous works such as Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. The Public commissioned Let Me Down Easy when George C. Wolfe was running the company and had planned to produce it in the 2005-06 season, but the show was postponed.

After spending the past year refining Let Me Down Easy at the Long Wharf Theater and American Repertory Theater, Smith told the Times that the forthcoming off-Broadway production will be “a substantial revision of what I did before, focusing far more on health care than the previous productions.” As for the Public, she said, "There is no bitterness on my part. In this economy, we have to look for new ways of collaborating, build new relationships, and hopefully push theater into a new era that is less ghettoized, so you see people in places you wouldn't expect them to be."