Anna Deavere Smith's New Play Is About Her Own Family. It's Her Most Personal Work Yet.

Anna Deavere Smith has spent four decades putting other people's voices onstage. Now, with Basil Biggs premiering in Philadelphia this month, she's doing something she has never done before: turning the lens on her own bloodline. The subject is her great-great-grandfather, a free Black man who helped make Lincoln's Gettysburg Address possible. The timing, for the nation's 250th birthday, is not accidental.