I don’t believe in takeaways … but I hope that what I’ve done is pricked in people their recognition of what they’ve brought into the theater and therefore what they’re going to do after. It’s not clear what the answer is—I'm asking you to figure it out. I believe you can figure it out, and I believe you're smarter than me—and I really do, I'm not just being facetious. Especially in these audiences, the people who come to these performances—they’re very rarified people who can spend the time and money on the ticket. When you’re coming to this kind of theater, you're not quite sure it's entertainment. I'm very lucky to have you there and I know if you come you are a concerned citizen and that you do have intellectual or financial or compassion resources to do something.

Wong: One theme that stuck out to me was the use of footwear and what you decided to wear on your feet, or the decision to be barefoot in certain scenes. What’s the thinking behind that?

Smith: That's been in all of my works since 25 years ago. It's an outgrowth of two things. One, I do want to make a signal to you that although it's documentary, there is something that is not true, that is metaphoric, that is abstract. Secondly, whenever I was doing my shows prior to my play Fires in the Mirror [1992], there was always this problem about which shoe would be correct for [the characters featured in the play]. When the designer and I sat down to think about what to wear, there was no budget for shoes. So I was just, like, let’s just not have any shoes.

Also, as I said before, my goal is to be “The Other.” That gets back to my grandfather's adage: If you say a word often enough it becomes you. If you think about what the shoe is, if I go to a chiropractor, he or she might look at your shoes and tell you where you carry your weight; the shoe is a really important part of identity. And I’m not just talking about shopping for Manolo Blahniks or shopping for the right Nikes. It holds your weight. Different people wear different shoes. The shoe is going to carry a different soul.

When I went to South Carolina, I talked to who was then the post-massacre pastor of Mother Emanuel Church, Reverend Betty Clark. And when I interviewed her, she told me that she takes her shoes off behind the pulpit to be closer to God—that she feels closer to God when her foot's on the floor. Well, I would extend that to say that for me I feel closer to the earth and therefore more grounded and more stable without the shoe.

Wong: Who was your favorite character to act out?

Smith: Well I don’t know. My mother had five children, and she would never say she had a favorite. I will say that [I enjoyed] beating the challenge of performing Allen Bullock, given the fact that I am interested in that which is not me. (And I have been since I was a child—I was always told stop staring.) So in that way I was very interested and continue to be interested in the challenge of performing Allen Bullock, who was the young man who was seen smashing up police cars in Baltimore—the way he talks is very, very unusual to me. And I'm very interested in Taos Proctor, who was the Indian [Yurok fisherman and former inmate]. Those two men are so far from who I am and how I present myself in the world that I find them endlessly fascinating, and my work on them never stops. I'll be working on them tonight before I go on stage.