Some of us still remember when Anna Deavere Smith was researching "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992," a look at the city after the Rodney King beating, the acquittal of policemen charged with beating King and the subsequent civil unrest. Research for the project, commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum to capture that moment, brought her to The Times, often talking with former editor Shelby Coffey, who became a character in "Twilight." That was then, this is now: Smith has taken on the "school-to-prison pipeline" in a new work called "Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education, the California Chapter.
Essential Arts and Culture: A passport, a pipeline, bronzes and 'Bent'
