Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities (1992) is a one-person play by Anna Deavere Smith, an African-American playwright, author, actress, and professor. It explores the Crown Heights riot (which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in August 1991) and its aftermath through the viewpoints of African-American and Jewish people, mostly based in New York City, who were connected directly and indirectly to the riot.

Fires in the Mirror is composed of monologues taken directly by Smith from transcripts of the interviews she conducted with the people whom she portrays in the play. She interviewed more than 100 individuals in the course of creating this play. It is considered a pioneering example of the genre known as verbatim theatre. It received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show.

Context

Anna Deavere Smith's play Fires in the Mirror is a part of her project On the Road: A Search for the American Character. It is a series of monologues which she has created from interviews. Fires in the Mirror chronicles the Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn, New York in August 1991. In that racially divided neighborhood, populated largely by African Americans and Chabad Hasidic Jews, a car driven by a Jewish man veered onto a sidewalk and struck two children, killing Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old Caribbean-American boy. The death, and what the African-American community perceived as a delayed response of city emergency medical personnel, sparked protests by them in the neighborhood. During these, a group of black youths attacked and fatally injured Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jewish student visiting from Australia. Days of rioting ensued, exposing to national scrutiny the depth of the racial divisions in Crown Heights. The rioting resulted in 190 injuries, 129 arrests, and an estimated one million dollars in property damage.

Smith interviewed residents of Crown Heights, including participants in the disturbances, as well as leading politicians, writers, musicians, religious leaders, and intellectuals. From this material, she chose which figures to highlight and speeches to use in the monologues of her play. Through the words of 26 different people, in 29 monologues, Smith explores how and why these people signaled their identities, how they perceived and responded to people different from themselves, and how barriers between groups can be breached. "My sense is that American character lives not in one place or the other", Smith writes in her introduction to the play, "but in the gaps between the places, and in our struggle to be together in our differences." The title of the play suggests a vision of art as a site of reflection where the passions and fires of a specific moment can be examined from a new angle, contemplated, and better understood.

Characters

  • Ntozake Shange: 42- to 45-year-old African-American playwright, poet, novelist.
  • Anonymous Lubavitcher Woman: Jewish mid-thirties preschool teacher.
  • George C. Wolfe: African-American playwright who was also director/producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival. (served 1993–2004)
  • Aaron M. Bernstein: Jewish man in his fifties. Physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Anonymous Girl: A junior high, teen-age black girl of Haitian descent. Lives in Brooklyn. (near Crown Heights)
  • The Reverend Al Sharpton: Well-known African-American New York activist and minister.
  • Rivkah Siegal: Lubavitcher woman. Graphic designer. Age unspecified.
  • Angela Davis: Prominent African-American activist in her late 40s. Author, orator, and scholar. Then a Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
  • Monique 'Big Mo' Matthews: African-American rapper in Los Angeles.
  • Leonard Jeffries: African-American Professor of African American Studies at City University of New York, where he was former chair of the department.
  • Letty Cottin Pogrebin: Author and founding editor of Ms. Magazine. Of Jewish descent and in her fifties.
  • Minister Conrad Mohammed: African-American minister of New York associated with the Nation of Islam; he later became a Baptist. He served as minister for Louis Farrakhan.
  • Robert F. Sherman: Executive Director of the City of New York's Increase the Peace Corps (part of the Mayor's Office).
  • Rabbi Joseph Spielman: Spokesperson in the Luabvitch community.
  • Reverend Canon Doctor Heron Sam: African-American pastor at St. Mark's Crown Heights Church.
  • Anonymous Young Man #1: resident of Crown Heights, Caribbean-American man in his late teens or early twenties.
  • Michael S. Miller: Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council.
  • Henry Rice: Crown Heights resident.
  • Norman Rosenbaum: Brother of Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian.
  • Anonymous Young Man #2: Crown Heights resident, an African-American young man in his late teens or early twenties.
  • Sonny Carson: African-American activist.
  • Rabbi Shea Hecht: middle-aged Lubavitcher rabbi, spokesperson.
  • Richard Green: Director of the Crown Heights Youth Collective and Co-director of Project CURE (a black-Hasidic basketball team that was developed after the riots)
  • Rosalynn Malamud: Lubavitcher resident of Crown Heights.
  • Reuven Ostrov: Lubavitcher youth and member of project CURE, 17 years old at the time of the riot. He worked as an assistant chaplain at Kings County Hospital.
  • Carmel Cato: Father of Gavin Cato, immigrant from Guyana and resident of Crown Heights.

Fires in the Mirror is a postmodern play. According to David Rush, characteristics of a postmodern play include the minimization of a single "author"; its purpose is to engage the audience rather than express one point of view. There may be multiple narratives interacting with each other, the structure departs from the conventional play pattern, and the play is usually fragmented. Fires in the Mirror encompasses all of these characteristics.

Many of the monologues are accompanied by music, ranging from black hip hop to Jewish religious chants. The music is meant to pair with the author's background or the essence of each monologue.

Fires in the Mirror has also been produced by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey; Brown University, Stanford University, Royal Court Theatre in London, and many others.