The Arizona Project: Women, Justice and the Law
Award-winning playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith will debut a new work this November exploring women’s relationships to justice and the law. The Arizona Project is a one-woman play commissioned by Bruce Ferguson, Director of Future Arts Research (F.A.R.), a groundbreaking new artist-driven research program at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Smith is among the artists inaugurating the F.A.R. program, which launched in 2008. The Arizona Project was inspired by an ongoing series of initiatives of the advocacy group Arizona Lawyers Honoring Justice O'Connor.
As in her well known previous works, Smith presents several interwoven monologues in this one-woman performance, drawing verbatim from a series of interviews she conducted over the course of three weeks in 2008. Her work honors the 2006 naming of Arizona State University’s law school for retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—the first U.S. law school to be named for a woman.
“Anna Deavere Smith’s incisive, passionate work overlaps multiple genres, including documentary film, journalism, and biography, thus making The Arizona Project an exciting contribution to the inaugural year of F.A.R.,” said Program Director Bruce Ferguson. “Anna's interdisciplinary approach parallels that of F.A.R., which re-envisions the traditional artist residency as an opportunity for participants to work with multiple departments throughout the university.”
The Arizona Project presents the stories of Justice O’Connor, as well as those of more than 30 women with relationships to the American judicial system, including prison system employees, incarcerated women, female lawyers, activists and others. Without identifying a specific social agenda, The Arizona Project touches upon several contemporary issues through these diverse personal stories, including immigration, domestic violence, and the challenges faced by women living on Native American reservations.
The naming of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU honors Justice O'Connor's career-long dedication to public service, her intellectual vigor and her sense of fair-mindedness. During the course of her career O’Connor served in all three branches of the Arizona State government, including two terms in the Senate, one as Majority Leader. In 1981 she became the first woman ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Her appointment by President Ronald Regan marked a profound shift in the types of professional opportunities available to women on the national stage. During her tenure, O’Connor helped define the balance of power on many of the issues of broadest concern to the nation, including abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty and religion. She retired from the Supreme Court after 24 years of service in 2005.