Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities

Abstract

O of the celebrated theater events of 1992, Fires in the Mirror emerged from Anna Deavere Smith's oral history project in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a neighborhood where Hasidic Jews, African Americans, Latinos, and others struggled to co-exist until the summer of 1991, when a car from the Hasidic Grand Rebbe's motorcade ran onto the sidewalk, killing seven-year-old Gavin Cato. The ensuing violence escalated with accusations that a Jewish ambulance had rescued the slightly injured driver, leaving a battered child to die. Jews insisted they were trying to lift the car from a second child when African Americans started to beat them, hurling anti-Semitic taunts of fealty to Hitler (Let's turn the ovens on). In just three hours, an angry black gang surrounded and killed a visiting rabbinical student from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, and the saga of violence continues to this day. Smith has noted that her opening was delayed as New York braced for aftershocks of the Los Angeles riots (see Interview, this issue). Given the urgent atmosphere, Smith's audiences were electrified by the chance to talk honestly about race during post play discussions. Fires in the Mirror is full of competing voices, every word culled from oral history interviews conducted by Smith with prominent Americans and a broad range of residents from Crown Heights. Smith's virtuoso solo performance of twenty-nine characters negotiating their racial milieu played for an extended run, receiving national recognition at the Theater Communications Group conference in June, 1992. Smith also has been featured by National Public Radio, Bill Moyers, even Arsenio Hall. In her play and performance, multiple indexes of difference (class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, language, age, vocal and bodily mannerisms, even table manners) refresh and surprise as the story unfolds; people on all sides elude stereotypes. The audience realizes that Hasidim may not be American or East European when the brother of slain Yankel Rosenbaum addresses crowds with his Australian accent. Nor do Hasidic women present the rigid face that a