We had an extraordinary theater experience last night at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. Let Me Down Easy is an Anna Deavere Smith “play in evolution” that begs the audience to inquiry about the nature of grace. If you are not familiar with Deavere Smith’s work, you can find her on Ted. Her solo performances are based on interviews with people she seeks out in order to learn how the world occurs to them. As she talks with them and records the conversations, she acquires these people as characters who then inhabit her play as she inhabits them. Barefoot, so as better to “walk in their words,” she expresses their thoughts and emotions as she speaks their words verbatim.

It’s the weaving. In Let Me Down Easy, she mixes the views of theologians (including a Buddhist monk and an Iranian imam) about the concept of grace (which is a uniquely Christian concept) with the actual experience of grace as it visits or people’s lives. Reverends James Cone (“Grace is Power”) and Peter Gomes (businessmen are disinclined to practice the golden rule until after are successful) provide glimpses into different worldviews and experiences, one following the other at the beginning and both reappearing throughout.

But the play is as much about “Disgrace” as it is about grace. Her explorations of the genocide in Rwanda and its impact on survivors provides one powerful theme. A second theme is in her critique of the U.S. healthcare system which, in the words of Phil Pizzo, is very close to reaching equivalence with healthcare systems in 3rd world countries.

Practical experiences include a doctor who waited five days for FEMA to evacuate the Charity Hospital in New Orleans during Katrina and its aftermath, amid the black patients and nurses who knew that no one would come for them. In a touching conclusion, an orphanage director in Johannesburg talks about how she sits with children dying of aids.

You can hear Anna Deavere Smith doing some of her characters (including the wonderful Ann Richards, former Texas Governor, talking about her Chi) with Christopher Lydon here. (Many thanks to Craig DeLarge for picking up on my tweets and then searching out the two clips linked above and sending them to me. Also thanks to Jessica Lipnack, who inspired me to start going to the A.R.T. in the first place.)