Guild Hall is honored to welcome Academy of the Arts Member and 13-time Tony Award-winning producer Daryl Roth (Kinky Boots, Indecent, Normal Heart, The Picture of Dorian Gray) and Anna Deavere Smith (Twilight: Los Angeles, Notes from the Field, The West Wing) for an intimate conversation about their friendship, creative journeys, and shared commitment to theater that provokes thought and inspires change.
With a legacy of bringing urgent, socially relevant stories to the stage, Roth and Smith will discuss the power of storytelling to illuminate timely issues, challenge perspectives, and foster empathy. Through personal reflections and behind-the-scenes insights, they will explore the intersection of art and activism, the evolving role of theater in today’s world, and the enduring impact of work that dares to ask the big questions.
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Daryl Roth
Daryl Roth is a 13 time Tony Award-winning Broadway producer and leading innovator in the American theatre, with a career spanning over three decades. Credited with some of the most thought-provoking productions in New York City and throughout the world, Ms. Roth has brought to the stage the works of many of our greatest dramatists, including Edward Albee, Paula Vogel, and Nilo Cruz; has helped shepherd the careers of new playwrights; and is the force behind the Tony and Olivier Award winning Best Musical Kinky Boots (Broadway, U.S. Tour, London, Toronto, Australia, Korea, Japan).
Ms. Roth is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing 7 Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women; and Wit.
She champions stories that connect to the wider world through the stories they tell, and is particularly drawn to themes that include issues of gender and identity, family dynamics, stories with strong women at the core, and those that reflect her Jewish heritage. Among the more than 130 shows she has produced both on and Off Broadway include Larry Kramer’s seminal play about the AIDS crisis, The Normal Heart (2011 Tony Award); Paula Vogel’s award-winning play Indecent; Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron’s international hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore; and Gloria: A Life, a play about the iconic Gloria Steinem.. Other prominent productions include Absolute Brightness; Angels in America; Between the Lines; Buyer & Cellar; Company; Curtains; Funny Girl; Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia; Into the Woods; It Shoulda Been You; The Kite Runner; Left on Tenth; Life of Pi; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; War Horse; and The Year of Magical Thinking. Spring 2025: Old Friends, Othello, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Ms. Roth was at the forefront of creating philanthropic partnerships that reflect and respond to themes from her productions; inspiring audiences, and supporting and raising awareness for organizations. Some examples include W;t and Left on Tenth (New York Hospital); Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Dress for Success); The Normal Heart (Human Rights Campaign, Friends in Deed, amfAR, and The Actors Fund); Kinky Boots (True Colors Fund); and Life of Pi(World Wildlife Fund).
She strongly believes in supporting the next generation of playwrights, directors and designers, and since 1996 has been honoring a gifted theatre artist with the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, providing them with financial support as they develop new works in an artistic residency. She also mentors early career producers, sharing her experience and advice as they forge their own paths.
The Daryl Roth Theatre, the landmark Off-Broadway venue on Union Square, opened its unique main theatre space in 1996 with the iconic De La Guarda, which with Fuerza Bruta, played an exceptional combined 14 years. Other extraordinary productions include Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself; Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas, Gloria: A Life; and Titanique. The theatre was the first performing arts venue to reopen its doors in post-pandemic New York with Blindness, which premiered in March 2021.
In the intimate DR2 venue, she has presented critically acclaimed shows and The DR2 Kids programming, which introduces our youngest patrons to the theatre.
Dedicated to supporting a number of non-profit organizations, Ms. Roth is a Trustee Emeritus of Lincoln Center Theatre and a former Trustee of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Honors include The New Dramatists Outstanding Career Achievement Award; New York Living Landmarks Award; and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. She is proud to have been inducted into the 2017 Theatre Hall of Fame.
Photo: Jim Cox
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ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Smith's work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance.
Smith has created over fifteen one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her play This Ghost of Slavery was recently featured in the Atlantic Magazine, making it one of only two plays published during the magazine’s 166 year history. Other plays authored by Smith include Notes from the Fieldabout the school to prison pipeline, Let Me Down Easy, about health care; House Arrest, about the U.S. presidency and the press; and Twilight: Los Angeles, about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Twilight was recently named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times. In 2018, HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. PBS has broadcast, Fires in the Mirror, Twilight and Let Me Down Easy.
President Obama awarded Smith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. She has been selected to give the 2024 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in Washington. She was selected in 2015 to give the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the John F. Kennedy Center. Additional honors include the MacArthur Award, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for Achievement in the Arts, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University Medical School, Obie Awards, and two Tony nominations. She was runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Smith is also an actress in popular culture, having been a part of such shows as Netflix’s Inventing Anna, ABC’s For the Peopleand Black-ish. Previously, she appeared in Nurse Jackie and The West Wing. Films include The American President, Philadelphia, Ghosted and Rachel Getting Married.
She has several honorary degrees including those from Oxford, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Spelman, Dartmouth, Prairie View University and Bard College.
In 2023, she was Eastman Professor at Oxford University – Balliol College. She is a University Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She serves on Biden’s President’s Committee for Arts and Humanities.
Sponsors
Performing Arts programming is supported in part by funding from Galia Meiri-Stawski and Axel Stawski, Henry and Peggy Schleiff, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, and Monica and Peter Tessler. Music Programming is supported in part by The Ellen and James S. Marcus Endowment for Musical Programming.
Additional support provided by Friends of the Theater: John and Joan D’Addario, Natascia Ayers and Jim Ciquera, Christine and Bill Campbell, Gabrielle and Gianpaolo de Felice, Lena Kaplan, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan, Michèle and Steve Pesner, The Schaffner Family Foundation, Lisa Schultz and Ezriel Kornel, Jayne Baron Sherman and Deborah Zum, Stacey and Oliver Stanton, Leila Straus, Susi and Peter Wunsch, and Andrew Yuder and Kyle Glaeser.