Syracuse Symposium 2004: Humor concludes Nov. 18 with Anna Deavere Smith

Syracuse Symposium 2004: Humor concludes Nov. 18 with Anna Deavere SmithNovember 11, 2004Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Playwright and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith will visit Syracuse University Nov. 18 as the final guest in the Syracuse Symposium 2004: Humor.

Smith’s presentation, “Snapshots: Glimpses of America in Change” will be held in Grant Auditorium, located in White Hall in SU’s College of Law, at 7:30 p.m. The event, co-sponsored by Kaleidoscope and U-Encounter, is free and open to the public.

Hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theater,” Smith uses humor to explore issues of race, community, identity and character.

A MacArthur Fellow, Smith won an Obie Award for “Fires In the Mirror,” and most recently has played a national security advisor on the NBC drama “The West Wing.”

Syracuse Symposium is an intellectual festival, hosted by The College of Arts and Sciences, which celebrates interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating. The theme for the Fall 2004 Symposium is humor. Other keynote speakers and performers that appeared this semester include cartoonist Garry Trudeau; documentary filmmaker Michael Moore; The Capitol Steps political satire group; writer and satirist P.J. O’Rourke; Muslim stand-up comic Shazia Mirza; New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and University of Chicago philosophy professor Ted Cohen.